Better call Sonali: Her journey from earning Rs 7,000 a month to becoming superstar Diljit Dosanjh’s manager

“We’ve been friends for 14 years now, though I started managing his work professionally around eight years back,” says Sonali, who took a huge risk when she quit her job and became Diljit’s manager. But looking back, taking risks is probably Sonali’s second nature. Although she has lived the most part of her life in Noida, her family has moved a lot. “My father’s business would take us from one city to another. There were times when we would have excess of everything, and times when we would be cooped up in one room, all five-six of us,” she says.

The insecurity and financial instability saw Sonali start earning at the young age of 17. “We needed a regular flow of money, so I took up a job at Fortis in healthcare and pursued college via distance learning while my sister took dance classes.”

At a salary of Rs 7,000 a month, Sonali would take a rickshaw, catch a bus and then walk to work in Delhi. Her dogged determination and never-say-die spirit saw her hustle, and rise. From healthcare to automobiles to education, she kept looking for opportunities and better pay. “There was no dream. I simply kept working, salary to salary, dabbling in marketing, human resource, administration, corporate sales etc till a friend recruited me at her HR company and it became a route to T-Series,” she says.

Impressed with her presentation, T-Series pursued Sonali for five months to join it. “I am a spiritual person and I would fast every Thursday. Coincidentally the T-Series office would make a call every Thursday, asking me to join them! To be honest, I was hesitant because the office was 40km away. But they were persistent, and in a way, it was destined, because it’s here that I met Diljit Dosanjh.”

T-Series also turned into a huge learning ground for Sonali; she was trained and taught the rules of the game—music marketing, production, managing artists and, most importantly, artists and repertoire management.

“Artists and repertoire management. In India, especially in the music industry, people are not even aware of it. An A&R division works with the artist from the ground up—from content creation to album release. We have limited people with A&R experience; instead we have music supervisors who know nothing about music creation or business,” says Sonali, who became Diljit’s sounding board for all business, contractual and professional work. “I must’ve been 22-23 then. I moved to Eros, into film marketing, and worked on big budgets like Shamitabh, Badlapur, Baaji Rao Mastani etc, till one day, Diljit asked me to represent him as a manager for Udta Punjab.”.

After his Punjab 1984 became a major hit, Diljit was signed for Udta Punjab, but the film’s makers wanted to talk to his team and manager in Mumbai. Sonali it was. “And just like that, we—he and I—both took a risk and trusted our instincts. He thus became one of the first Punjabi artists to have a professional manager, that too a woman. And I, with no clue about the Punjabi language or music, left my job and have been his manager since then,” she says.

It has been more than eight years, and barring the initial hiccups of cultural conditioning, “being judged for her working hours, for being a woman manager”, life has been a rollercoaster ride for Sonali. “The industry here in Punjab has rishtedars who double up as managers. They have no business or music acumen and are neither professional. Diljit too was questioned about a woman being his manager, but I am yet to meet someone who is so gender-neutral, has immense respect for women, is non-judgemental and trusts me completely.”

It has been more than a decade now, of building Diljit’s work profile, global presence, brand image, contracts, networking with studios, music companies, sponsors, tours and festivals, agencies etc.

“To tell the world how big Punjabi music is was a huge hustle. I had no precedent or guide. I am still a one-woman independent manager! People were aware of his music and how he was creating records filling up popular arenas. They check the statistics and the feedback. And this information was floating. Pitching it to the right people, companies and agencies was a challenge.”

It was all this networking over the years that led to Coachella’s talent acquisition. “Diljit is a highly disciplined and high-performing individual. He has a clear vision of what next. It’s relayed and we get to work,” says Sonali, who has just hired a person to help her.

In the meantime, her life is “fully focused and dedicated to Diljit”. There are entrepreneurial dreams of setting up her own company, but right now she says she is living the life. “I travel the world, every day is a new day, new project, new set of people, places, every day is a blessing.”