Brands
Aoneha Tagore gets into entrepreneurship with Collabor8 launch
Former Spotify India editorial head sets up firm focused on long-term brand and fandom building
MUMBAI: Aoneha Tagore is stepping out of streaming and into entrepreneurship, launching artist management and brand advisory firm Collabor8 with a clear pitch: manage musicians for careers, not just campaigns.
The former head of editorial at Spotify India has positioned the venture as a response to an industry still wired to short-term release cycles even as artists double up as cultural voices and community builders. Founded in late 2025, Collabor8 is built around longer-horizon planning, narrative shaping and career development.
Its offering spans music strategy, public relations, social media, content direction, brand partnerships, monetisation and positioning. The bundle sits under what the firm calls “Music Surround Services”, designed to align creative output with bigger career goals and market positioning.
Tagore brings more than two decades of experience across radio, television and digital. Her track record runs through WorldSpace Satellite Radio, Fever FM, Oye FM, Radio City, 9X Network, MTV and VH1, alongside work on the launch of MTV Beats. Most recently, she oversaw playlist strategy and artist programming at Spotify India during a period of rapid growth for the platform.
At Collabor8, artist management is framed as brand stewardship. The firm says it follows a people-first, insight-led model that privileges narrative clarity, fandom development and durable growth over momentary spikes in visibility. It works with emerging, scaling and established artists, tailoring playbooks to individual ambitions.
The agency has already signed a mix of upcoming and established acts and plans to keep its gaze on career planning beyond conventional release calendars.
Explaining the move, Tagore said:
“Artists today are not just releasing music, they’re shaping culture, building communities and initiating conversations. Yet much of the ecosystem still manages them for the next release or moment. Collabor8 was created to help artists articulate their vision, how they want to be seen, heard and remembered but most importantly, build meaningful narratives around their brand identity. Our focus is on building scale, longevity and fandom for music artists, not fleeting visibility.”
As the artist economy matures, Collabor8 is pitching itself as a partner for strategic, sustainable and authentic careers. The wager is simple: in a crowded market, the artists who last will be those built like brands. Collabor8 wants to be in the engine room when that happens.
Brands
YES Bank appoints S Anantharaman as chief risk officer
Former Jio Financial Services group chief risk officer takes charge of enterprise-wide risk at the embattled private lender
MUMBAI: YES Bank is not taking chances with risk anymore. The private lender has appointed S Anantharaman as its chief risk officer, a hire that signals the bank’s continued effort to rebuild credibility and tighten the controls that once famously slipped.
Anantharaman arrives from Jio Financial Services, where he served as group chief risk officer and built a risk management architecture spanning lending, payments, insurance broking and asset management from the ground up. Before that, he held the chief risk officer role at Bank of Baroda and senior leadership positions at HDFC Bank and L&T Finance Holdings. Three decades in banking and financial services, in other words, with scars and qualifications to match. He is a chartered accountant and a CFA charterholder.
At YES Bank, his brief is considerable. Anantharaman will oversee the bank’s entire enterprise-wide risk framework, covering credit policy, market risk, operational risk, information security, data governance, analytics, model governance and data privacy. It is, in short, every lever that matters when a bank is trying to prove it has grown up.
YES Bank’s turbulent past needs little rehearsing. What it needs now is exactly what Anantharaman has spent thirty years building: the kind of risk culture that stops problems before they become headlines. The appointment suggests the bank knows it.
