Vijay Nair Wiki, Age, Family, Biography & More

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Vijay Nair is an Indian businessman who is known for being the founder of the indie music and artist management company Only Much Louder (OML). He made headlines on 28 September 2022 when he was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation for his connection to the Delhi Excise Policy scam case.

Contents

Wiki/Biography

Vijay Nair was born in 1984 (age 38 years; as of 2022) in Mumbai. He is a dropout from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai. ^[1]The Economics Times

Physical Appearance

Height (approx.): 5′ 7″

Hair Colour: Black

Eye Colour: Black

Family

There is not much information about his family. His elder brother, Ajay Nair, joined OML in 2010 as the CFO and later became its COO.

Career

Entrepreneur

Nair started his career at 15 by doing marketing gigs for Procter & Gamble’s web portal Masti.com. After his short stint at P&G, he worked for an online magazine called Gigpad. At Gigpad, he had a writing role for which he had to travel across the country following bands and their gigs. While working at Gigpad, he made an acquaintance with the rock band Acquired Funk Syndrome and started working as its manager. Soon, he dropped out of college and started managing bands as a full-time gig. In an interview, he talked about the same and said,

I thought I will drop out for a year to begin with but then I started managing other bands and it just started rolling from there. It wasn’t like I learnt anything at college.”

A year after Nair started managing Acquired Funk Syndrome, he also started managing the popular Bombay-based rock band Zero, where he met Girish “Bobby” Talwar; Talwar was the bassist of the band. In 2003, Nair made a big breakthrough in his fledgling artist management career when he came on board as a manager with the band Pentagram, India’s most popular rock band then. Vishal Dadlani was the frontman of the band. He co-founded the artist and event management company Only Much Louder in 2002, along with Girish “Bobby” Talwar and Arjun S Ravi, in Mumbai. The company began informally in 2002 as an independent artist management venture by Nair and was officially incorporated by Talwar and Nair in 2006. The company has organised various music and comedy programmes like The Dewarists, MTV Sound Trippin, AIB Roast, and Stage42. Eventually, OML ran a digital publication, video production house, booking agency, record label, and live event company. Apart from organizing programmes, his company also runs its own ticketing and technology platform, Insider. in., which was acquired by PayTM in 2017.

Politics

He joined the AAP in 2014. Between 2018 and 2019, he used to plan the social media strategy, party events, and fundraising for the party. In 2019 he started managing the party’s political campaign. In 2020, he worked as a volunteer for the Aam Aadmi Party’s campaign for the Delhi Legislative Assembly Elections. He was responsible for managing social media accounts and planning party events while working for the AAP.

Controversies

Harassment by a Cyberstalker

In 2017, Vijay made headlines as a victim of cyberstalking. It all started back in 2015, when a netizen, who used variations of the word Ketaki as its name, wrote disgraceful comments on numerous tweets by Vijay. The netizen used to interfere between his chats with other people, especially with women, and respond to his conversations in an obscene manner. After a long struggle, Vijay was able to uncover the identity of the netizen, who turned out to be a woman of his acquaintance. The woman worked at a company called The Viral Fever, which was OML’s rival. On interrogation, she claimed that it was her boss, TVF founder Arunabh Kumar, who made her harass Nair. However, the police discovered that Arunabh Kumar was innocent. As cyberstalking is not an offence under the IT Act, the woman wasn’t arrested or charged. ^[2]Pinkvilla

Accused of sexual harassment

In 2018, Caravan magazine printed an article about Nair that said he had a toxic work environment for female employees. Nair was accused of sexual harassment when he was the CEO of OML. The report further stated,

He asked a woman to get into a bathtub with him and told another at 2 am that he needed a massage. He even sent explicit images—including one in which a man appeared to be ejaculating—to a woman, without her consent.” ^[3]The Caravan

Arrested in connection to Delhi Excise Policy Scam

In 2022, Nair was taken into custody by CBI in connection to the Delhi Excise Policy Scam. In reference to Nair, AAP talked about him and said,

We strongly condemn these unconstitutional and illegal methods being adopted by the BJP. All allegations against Vijay Nair and AAP leaders are false and completely baseless.” ^[4]The Indian Express

Facts/Trivia

He dropped out of college at the age of eighteen and started managing leading Indian indie bands, including Pentagram, Zero, Pin Drop Violence, and others. He wanted to take a break and join college again, but after his business started to flourish, he did not go back to college.

His family did not stop him from leaving the college because they thought that he was not wasting time sitting ideally at home, but was working hard on his business.

In an interview, he said that he had no knowledge of music before starting the business. In an interview, he talked about this and said,

I started listening to bands when I was 15 or 16. Before international bands, I started listening to Indian bands. That’s how I got into it more seriously. For me, my journey has been about building a business and the love of doing that as opposed to just the love of music itself because music came in after I started the company. I wasn’t a major music connoisseur before that. I was a fan first in terms of what I was doing and I just wanted to work and get something done.”