Artist curation
Every artist we have curated.
GIFLIF has curated over 100 artists pan-India — musicians and bands, writers and poets, and voices from film and theatre — for corporates, schools, colleges, institutions and its own two festivals. The roster below is who has actually been on those stages.
If you are a company, a campus or an institution trying to work out who should play, who should speak, and in what order — this page is the answer to that question, and the evidence behind it.
64 artists

Lucky Ali
Music
Bloodywood
Music
Indian Ocean
Music
Thaikkudam Bridge
Music
Parvaaz
Music
Rabbi Shergill
Music
Kabir Cafe
Music
Raghu Dixit
Music
Alif
Music
Ballimaaraan
Music
Agnee
Music
Swarathma
Music
Bombay Bandook
Music
Anand Bhaskar Collective
Music
The Western Ghats
Music
Fiddle Craft
Music
Kavish Seth
Music
Britto KC
Music
Chaar Hazaari
MusicSutej Singh
MusicMohit Chauhan
Music
Kanishk Seth
Music
Blind Sherpa
Music
Narang Ensemble
Music
Nitesh Rajesh
Music
Ruskin Bond
Literature
Javed Akhtar
Literature
Gulzar
Literature
Rahat Indori
Literature
Waseem Barelvi
Literature
Gopaldas Neeraj
Literature
Devdutt Pattanaik
Literature
Kiran Nagarkar
Literature
Divya Prakash Dubey
Literature
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi
Literature
Gaurav Solanki
Literature
Ashok Chakradhar
LiteratureRavindra Singh
Literature
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
Film & theatre
Rajat Kapoor
Film & theatre
Hansal Mehta
Film & theatre
Taapsee Pannu
Film & theatre
Piyush Mishra
Film & theatre
Vinay Pathak
Film & theatre
Saurabh Shukla
Film & theatre
Sumantra Ghosal
Film & theatre
Shabana Azmi
Film & theatre
Prakash Jha
Film & theatre
Sudhir Mishra
Film & theatre
Subhash Ghai
Film & theatre
Vivek Agnihotri
Film & theatre
Jayprad Desai
Film & theatre
Vineet Kumar Singh
Film & theatre
Saurabh Dwivedi
Film & theatre
Samar Mehdi
Film & theatre
Sarah Mehdi
Film & theatre
Anubhav Sinha
Film & theatreNaveen Kasturia
Film & theatre
Rahul Ram
Film & theatre
Gurdas Maan
Client production
Papon
Client production
Seedhe Maut
Client productionRaghubir Yadav
Client productionManoj Joshi
Client productionWhat artist curation actually involves
Booking an artist is a transaction. Curating a line-up is a judgement — about who belongs on the same stage, in what order, in front of which audience, at what point in the night.
- Line-up design. Who plays, in what order, and what the evening adds up to.
- Negotiation and contracting. Fees, exclusivity windows, radius clauses, cancellation.
- Riders. Technical and hospitality — read properly, and costed before you sign, not after.
- Travel, logistics and hospitality. Flights, ground, stay, green room, and the hundred small things that decide whether an artist comes back next year.
- Pan-India reach. The relationships are national. The production may be regional; the curation is not.
We have been doing it for our own festivals since 2015, which means we have made these calls with our own money on the line — and that is a different kind of judgement from spending someone else's.
Curation for corporates, schools and colleges
Most people who reach this page are not booking a single act. They are trying to programme a whole thing — a college festival, an annual day, a convocation, a corporate offsite — and the real question is who belongs on that stage, in front of that particular audience.
A full campus festival
We curated the entire festival for VIT Bhopal — end to end. Mohit Chauhan headlined, with Kabir Cafe and the Anand Bhaskar Collective on the same line-up. The curation was ours.
Annual days and cultural weeks
A school audience is not a festival audience, and the acts that work are not the same ones. Getting that wrong is expensive and very visible on the day.
Offsites, annual meets, family days
Corporate rooms are the hardest to programme: a mixed audience, a fixed run-time, and no tolerance for an act that misreads it. We have produced at that level for State Bank of India.
Institutions we have curated or produced for include VIT Bhopal, Mansarovar Global University, Vishwarang, Madhya Pradesh Tourism and State Bank of India.
The client productions in the roster above were client shows, not editions of our own festivals — produced by GIFLIF under the client's name. We keep the distinction deliberately, because conflating the two is the easiest way to end up with a portfolio that quietly overstates itself.
Questions we get asked
Do you book artists without producing the event?
Yes. Curation and booking can be taken on its own — line-up design, negotiation, contracting, riders and artist logistics — while somebody else produces the show. It is also how a lot of our work starts, before it grows into full production.
Is curation limited to Madhya Pradesh and Delhi NCR?
No. Those two are our core production regions, where we hold the vendor and venue network directly. Artist curation is pan-India — the relationships are national and do not depend on where the show happens.
Can you get a specific artist?
Usually we can find out quickly. What matters more is whether that artist is right for your audience, your room and your budget — and we will tell you when the answer is no, which is more often than most people expect.
Do you curate for colleges, schools and corporates?
Yes, and it is a large part of the work. We curated the entire festival for VIT Bhopal — Mohit Chauhan headlined, alongside Kabir Cafe and the Anand Bhaskar Collective. A campus audience, a school audience and a corporate room each need a different line-up, and the commonest mistake is booking a name that is famous rather than one that fits the room.
Do you work with emerging artists as well as headliners?
Both, and the mix is most of the craft. Indiestaan exists partly to put independent artists in front of audiences in cities the touring circuit skips — Swarathma, Parvaaz, Alif and Kavish Seth sit on the same roster as Lucky Ali and Bloodywood.
Need a line-up, not just a name
Tell us the audience, the room and the budget range, and we will come back with a line-up rather than a price list.