Berklee Alumna Vishruti Bindal Named International Entrepreneur of the Year 2026

For Vishruti Bindal MA ’21 and her business partner, creative producer and technical designer Bahravi, winning Universal Music Group and Music Ally’s International Entrepreneur of the Year 2026 Award was about more than entrepreneurial success. It was recognition that an idea rooted in grassroots communities could resonate on a global stage. 

The award celebrated their work with Linear Festivals, a company redefining how performing arts festivals are experienced by combining sustainability, technology, and community in unexpected ways. As Bindal puts it, the recognition "encourages us to think more unabashedly about grassroots initiatives and it shows that independent projects can earn international recognition."

Based in Bangalore, India, Bindal has built a multidisciplinary career as a music supervisor, creative producer, and arts policy consultant. Since graduating from Berklee Valencia's Global Entertainment and Music Business master's program in 2021, she has supervised music for original Netflix and Amazon productions in India, co-founded Linear Festivals, contributed to arts policy initiatives, and become a leading voice in India's growing creative industries. 

Her connection to Berklee continued beyond graduation when she was selected for the inaugural Berklee/Netflix Music Supervisor Certificate Program in India. Invited by Netflix, Bindal became part of an initiative designed to nurture music supervision talent at a pivotal moment for India’s rapidly expanding streaming industry.

Her entrepreneurial journey took a new direction in 2024 when she and her business partner began developing what would become Linear Festivals. Rather than create another traditional arts festival, they asked a simple question: How could audiences experience the city through performance without spending hours stuck in traffic? With more than 12.8 million registered vehicles serving a population of around 14 million, Bengaluru’s congestion is an everyday reality for millions of residents—contributing to the city ranking among the most congested urban areas in the world. Their solution became Bangalore's first 24-hour multi-venue performing arts festival built around the city's metro network. 

Festivalgoers travel between performances by public transportation, moving through music, dance, theatre, neighborhood walks, and overnight performances before ending the experience the following afternoon.

Innovation quickly became central to the festival's identity. Faced with the lack of a ticketing system capable of handling a multi-venue format, the team partnered with local music technology company clubz to build its own platform. Sustainability was also a priority for their decision making. Initiatives range from encouraging audiences to use public transportation to repurposing exhibition materials into festival merchandise and replacing disposable signage with reusable cotton fabrics. 

The festival's long-term vision extends well beyond Bangalore. Rather than replicating the same event in different locations, Bindal envisions adapting the concept to each city's unique transportation network, whether that's buses, trams, or local trains. She also hopes to create international partnerships through sister-city collaborations, artist exchanges, and cultural residencies that connect creative communities across borders. Alongside preparations for the next edition of Linear Festivals this September, Bindal is developing a new music festival in Kochi, India.

Despite the breadth of her work today, Bindal says many of the lessons she applies daily trace back to her time at Berklee Valencia. Negotiating contracts, licensing music, understanding copyright, and designing meaningful festival experiences all draw directly from courses she took during her time at Berklee.

"I negotiate so many contracts every month," she says. "The contract class is the one class that I still think about every time I'm negotiating. Copyright is something I deal with quite regularly, whether it's in festivals or music supervision. I can call back on so many different classes that still help me with my work."

Her advice for current Berklee students is equally practical. "Take Pete Dyson's Copyright And Contract Management Class and Alexandre Perrin's Music Business Finance course more seriously," she says with a laugh. "It doesn't matter what you're doing in the music business, these are the two things that you'll inevitably use."

As Linear Festivals continues to expand and new projects take shape across India, Bindal remains focused on building creative experiences rooted in community, sustainability, and cultural exchange. Her career demonstrates that meaningful innovation doesn't always begin with the biggest budgets or the most established models—it often starts with understanding a city's unique challenges and imagining new ways to bring people together through music and the arts.