This is a woman who has worked in three of the four South Indian movie industries; she has also acted in a few Hindi movies. She started her own production company in 1999 and with it, a much-loved TV series that ran for around 470 episodes — Chithi .
Radikaa Sarathkumar is someone who many look up to, especially in Tamil households, because of the strong women characters she portrays. And while her production house, Radaan Mediaworks, has done well, managing a company didn’t come to her naturally. Radikaa was speaking at MMA Women Managers Convention in Chennai, the topic of which was ‘Mindset Matters’.
Highlighting the fact that life as an actress is quite hard, she said, “Not only are you a woman, to make it worse, you’re an actress!” she quipped, making the audience laugh. “Everyone has this preconceived notion that women, especially actresses, have no substance or a mind of their own.”
And nowhere was this more apparent than when she approached banks to take a loan to start her production house. “When I went to banks to present my company, everyone would talk to me very nicely, offering me coffee and praising my acting. They would even ask me to re-enact scenes from certain movies. This is in a bank, imagine!”
But when she brought up the topic of borrowing money, they would baulk and wish her well for her venture. “They were so condescending! It was a nightmare, trying to convince them that I was serious about the media company.”
Despite being turned away by banks, she was intent on starting her company. She then went into private borrowing. Once the finance was taken care of, Chithi took off the ground. “That’s when everyone started looking at it a little differently. Once you’ve attained what you want, you cannot sit back and say ‘I’ve made it’. The real challenge is not in breaking the ground or in being successful. It is in continuing to be that,” she said, eliciting thunderous applause from the audience.
“I haven’t been to college, I haven’t done an MBA. I’m not a professional on any account. But I threw myself into the deep end of the pool. It was the biggest challenge I ever faced.”
Facing the troubles
As she continued to run her business, she realised it’s exclusively about time management and, of course, the mindset.
“Every morning, when I wake up and see my phone, there’ll be hundreds of messages about things that are going wrong at work. At such a time, I have two choices — one, to be worked up and feel all negative and say, ‘Aiyoh, I don’t need this’; the second is to say ‘Okay, I can handle this, I will take it up’.
“So I go about solving all problems: get an actor, call the engineer and so on. And then, I go about my day. I learnt everything piece by piece. I developed a ‘never say die’ attitude. I became ambitious.”
However, she suffered a big setback when a movie she had produced, that was ready to be released, was leaked online. “I still remember the day I got this news — December 31. I was at a party with my husband when he told me this happened. Investment worth ₹14 crore went up in smoke.”
But did she sit and mope? “If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life, it is that tomorrow is another day, which I will face. The next day, I sat down and saw how the losses could be cut, how we can rectify it. Learning all this took time. Nothing happens overnight.”
Being a woman
She pointed out that being a woman means there will be certain preconceived notions. As an actress, she is constantly indirectly asked if she will act further. “Despite being in the profession for so many years, even today journalists ask me, ‘You’ve acted so well in this film. After this, you can’t do any other role, no? You’ve done the best role’. That is how they perceive things. Changing it all is not easy. But what you can do is be strong from within.
“I want all the women here to remember to believe in yourself. Don’t let anyone take away that belief from you. We cannot change the world, like Mother Teresa said. But we can throw a stone and create ripples,” she concluded, receiving a standing ovation at the end of her talk.