Abhinav Agrawal

Agrawal began learning Hindustani classical vocal music and tabla in the Allahabad gharana at the age of five. He is a graduate of Berklee College of Music, where he took a master's degree in music business.

Agrawal founded the Anahad Foundation in 2013 while he was in the third year of his undergraduate degree. The organisation works from the finding that although a large majority of India's musicians play folk music, they receive only a very small share of the music industry's revenues.

Anahad's principal initiative is the Backpack Studio project, which takes portable, battery-operated recording equipment directly into tribal and rural communities so that musicians can record professional-quality audio and video and build online profiles. The foundation acts as a record label, releasing recordings and directing royalties back to the musicians, and also archives artists in a digital directory, protects their intellectual property, supports research into art forms and promotes collaborations with songwriters.

The foundation is run by Agrawal together with his wife Shuchi Roy, a lawyer who serves as managing director and handles artists' rights and copyright, and a production head. It also offers a fellowship for ethnomusicologists.

Agrawal was named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list for 2019 in the arts category.

He was elected an Ashoka Fellow in 2019, under Ashoka India's arts and culture category, for his work with the Anahad Foundation.[2][3][4][5][6]