Nishant Mittal

Musicmandir is happy to interview Nishant Mittal, a musician with over 30,000 listeners & 70,000 streams on a complete Do-It-Yourself journey!. He recently had to deal with a personal injury which deeply affected his life as a musician. The ordeal was a hard one for him, but by writing about it, he hopes to spread some awareness and help the ones traveling on the same path.

Musicmandir – Tell us a little about yourself

Hi! I’m Nishant Mittal; an entrepreneur, musician, reader and movie buff from New Delhi, India. I’m all about creating something beautiful, whether it be in the form of my music, writings, startups or products. I began as a musician when I was 12 years old and got my first guitar as a gift from my parents. It was a blissful moment; so full of energy and excitement over infinite possibilities. Since then, I’ve been dreaming of being amongst the stars who’ve inspired me to make music and stay on this journey. It all frankly seemed impossible, until recently when my songs started picking up on the streaming platforms. I’m hoping that my unreasonable passion which has helped me stay on this journey, also makes the dream true. After all, I can only hope.

Musicmandir – Talk about your latest release

Sahi is a song about hope. It’s about wishing for something great when the reality isn’t all that beautiful. It’s about people who dream and the depths they explore in the quest of “making it big”. And most importantly, in the midst of all those ideas, Sahi is about appreciating life, just as you have it.

I started working on it a year ago and the song stepped into the production room soon after. Unfortunately, it met more than its fair share of setbacks, to be honest. I started tracking the song with my longtime friend and producer (Abhishek Pawar) and encountered some availability issues due to which I had to take it to two other producers. It didn’t work out with either of them, following which I got back to Abhishek who finally pulled it off this time. In the meantime, I faced a personal injury after getting the Covid vaccine which had me dealing with severe tinnitus and hyperacusis. It was hell which has still not left completely. This song took a year to produce when it should have taken 3 months. Thankfully, it’s finally out and has been received very well. God’s grace!

Listen to Sahi by Nishant Mittal –

Musicmandir – How do you balance between your music and your business running startups

I’ve never been a very social person. In fact, I’ve always been an extreme introvert without much social obligations to care about. The upside of being an introvert is that you find a lot of time for yourself (which would otherwise go in “chilling with friends” and stuff like that). I’ve been able to manage the grueling schedule that comes with running a high growth company while also carving out time for my music, reading, etc. precisely because of this. A lot of things change as you get older, but I hope to be able to keep doing this for as long as possible.

Musicmandir – You went through numerous challenges during the COVID phase in the last 2 years. Can you describe the experience?

These two years have been extremely difficult. Apart from the severely debilitating challenges related to my health and music as mentioned earlier, I faced a seriously tumultuous time professionally as well. My startup ( SpotHealth ) faced an existential dread and we lost a lot of money. But as it’s said in The Shawshank Redemption – Hope is a very good thing. Probably the best of all. And no good thing ever dies.

And so I hope…

Musicmandir – Tell us a little about your startups.

I started my first company (www.thetestament.com) in the first year of college. By the time we were graduating, the company had scaled to over 1.2 Crores in annual revenues without ever having raised even a penny. The Testament provided an ad-hoc workforce to companies for their marketing, sales, and research operations. The idea was to give companies an option to use The Testament, instead of hiring and firing people for short term projects. The going was good, until we realized that it’s hard to scale service companies beyond a point. We needed a product to grow big. In the next two years, we built three, and unfortunately none of them went anywhere. Before we knew it, we had burned 40 lakhs of our profits up in smoke. This marked the end of my first company’s quest for the stars. TT still takes high value consulting projects from select large companies, but it’s no longer a ticket to the moon. 

I’m now building SpotHealth, which is a community oriented social network focused on health. What we’ve realized is that the journey to being healthier and happier turns much easier, if there’s a perpetually active community pushing you to participate. This always happens. My mother is regular with her yoga classes because she has a lot of friends there, I used to play football because of the same reason, and so on. There’s a great future in building health focused communities and I’m hoping to raise funds to make it happen. Godspeed. 

Musicmandir – What’s next for Nishant Mittal?

I’m hoping to do some great work, both as an entrepreneur and a musician. That’s always been the dream. Thankfully, I’ve had some success in both the areas which tells me it’s possible to break out. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. 🙂

Musicmandir – Give us 5 Indian artists you admire or have been listening to.

It’s difficult to stop at five, but I’ve been a huge fan of Lucky Ali, Rabbi Shergil, Euphoria and Kailash Kher. I’d reserve the fifth spot for a band called Nigambodh. Incredibly talented and really good friends. I hope they someday become the Rammstein of India. They’re very capable of that.
Also, I’d like to overstep my bounds here and mention Prateek Kuhad. They guy deserves all the success he’s earned. Quite a terrific musician! 

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