Priyanka Khimani’s Vision For Billboard India

It’s never easy to explain the fragmented breadth of India’s music industry. Some of its workings are rather curious: the highest streamed artists are ones on Bollywood soundtracks, not albums. Independent artists are only now starting to sell out venues. Wedding singers perform to thousands who’ve never opened Spotify. Regional hits rack up the views but can’t land brand deals. Everyone knows who’s popular, but few know the people actually being heard.

Enter Billboard India, launching with the promise of data-driven charts, editorial credibility, and a megaphone for an industry that has long floundered in articulating its own narrative.

At the center of this venture is Priyanka Khimani (pronounced Pree-yung-ka Khi-maa-ni), the entertainment lawyer and media advisor who has spent over a decade telling anyone who would listen that Indian music is more than just actors lip syncing around a tree.

I am caught mid-belting the Mulan soundtrack when Khimani joins the Zoom. She smiles, compliments my singing, then before I can begin, says, “Wait, first, tell me a little bit about you.”

In eight years of interviewing influential people, no one has ever — for understandable reasons — opened by interviewing me.

It is a small moment, but it tells you a lot about how Khimani operates: read the room, assess the landscape, set the tone. It is the same reflex she is now applying to Billboard’s India edition, one of the most closely watched media arrivals of the year.

From Mumbai chawl to Nariman Point power broker

Khimani is one of India’s most in-demand entertainment and intellectual property lawyers. Khimani & Associates, a firm she founded right out of law school, has represented a client list that reads like a cross-section of the country’s modern music and film history, from A. R. Rahman, Arijit Singh and Divine to Anurag Kashyap and the late playback icon Lata Mangeshkar, her first client.

Her path there was not linear. She grew up in what she describes as “extreme poverty,” in one of Mumbai’s infamous chawls (one-room tenements). As a teenager she started working in entertainment as a screenwriter to support her family, before reluctantly pivoting to the guaranteed paycheque of the legal industry.

“I think very few people are blessed to have the kind of journey that I have had,” she says in our conversation.

Today, Khimani is blunt about what she brings into the room. “Over the years I have just become not apologetic about being perceived as ‘intimidating’,” she says. “It is what it is, it’s the reason you sought me out.”

Over the years, she has advised on some of the most sensitive flashpoints in Indian entertainment, including, per a Money Control profile, #MeToo allegations against director Anurag Kashyap and investigations involving rapper Badshah.

“Anyone who is in any real trouble will ultimately find their way to us, because there is one person that will fix it for them,” she says. “No one is getting cancelled so long as I am involved in advising them. No one is going to jail on my watch. ”

The “achha-sastha-jaldi” nation

For a lawyer this formidable, Khimani is unexpectedly frank about how India’s business culture often works against itself.

“I love to call us the ‘accha-sastha-jaldi’ (good-cheap-fast) nation,” she jokes. “Clients want everything as of yesterday, not recognising that good things take time. Quality work takes time. Haste makes waste.”

That impatience is one reason she believes India has struggled to build credible reference points for its music industry. In her telling, brands, promoters and film producers still chase the same five names, guided mostly by social media virality and vibes, not robust data.

“Where is the source of your data? Nothing,” she says. “It is social media popularity and reels. That cannot be the state of affairs. We are so much more than that.”

The Billboard India bet

In November 2025, Billboard announced its India edition (now the country’s third Penske Media franchise) in partnership with Other Side Ventures, with a rollout planned for early 2026. Khimani, who leads Other Side Ventures, is the media advisor and driving force behind the launch.

The launch addresses a fundamental infrastructure gap in the industry. While Spotify and YouTube provide some visibility, they offer snapshots rather than comprehensive analysis. “I have been talking about India to the global markets much before it became cool for people to look at India as a territory,” she says. “There is so much movement, success and growth, but we do not have a voice to measure it.”

Indian music consumption doesn’t fit neatly into Western models; how do regional variations across languages, genres, and listening habits translate into a single national chart?

Khimani acknowledges the complexity. Billboard India will not simply be “global brand slapped onto India”, replicating the American model, she tells me. “There’ll have to be a lot of localization.”

The charts will break down by region, language, and genre, working with data analytics firms Luminate and Billboard’s parent company Penske Media to develop India-specific methodologies, alongside planned events, lists and awards tailored to India’s fragmented, multilingual music landscape.

Narrative vs. Numbers

Beyond metrics, Khimani emphasizes narrative control. “What we lack as a country is effective narrative,” she says. “We are so fussed about press-release behaviour and headlines.”

The criticism extends to India’s publicity machinery, which she characterizes as focused on press releases and favorable headlines rather than substantive cultural commentary.

Her vision for Billboard India includes editorial judgment about what deserves attention, independent of streaming numbers or social media buzz. This positions Billboard as both data provider and cultural arbiter, a dual role that invites scrutiny.

Who decides what constitutes taste? How does a U.S.-based media brand adapt its aesthetic sensibilities to a market with fundamentally different musical traditions?

Khimani insists there will be “cross-pollination” between Billboard’s global and Indian operations, with Indian artists featured in the main Billboard publication and international coverage appearing in Billboard India. The Indian diaspora, she notes, spans multiple territories, and Billboard India will eventually activate in markets with significant South Asian populations.

The Skepticism She Expects

Khimani represents both Bollywood playback legends and independent artists—her clients include everyone from Arijit Singh to Divine and Jasleen Royal (“She’s going to have a big year,” Khimani tells me). This dual representation gives her a stake in how both sides of the industry evolve, though she maintains her role with Billboard India is advisory rather than operational.

Khimani defines success for Billboard India in abstract terms: “narrative and tastemaking.”

She’s also candid about the challenges. “The first few years is just going to be about seeding a brand,” she says, pushing back against expectations for immediate results. “We’re not going to get it right right off the bat.”

The first tangible test will be the charts themselves. When Billboard India releases its inaugural rankings, the industry will scrutinize the methodology, the omissions, and the surprises. Artists excluded from top positions will question the data sources. Managers will lobby for adjustments. Regional music ecosystems may reject charts that collapse linguistic diversity into aggregated national rankings.

Khimani seems prepared for this. “There’s going to be a lot of feedback to take in,” she acknowledges. The question is whether Billboard India can maintain editorial independence while navigating an industry where, as she notes from her legal practice, “lots of the people” constantly tell her “what my lane is.”

The Concert Boom And The Global Moment

Billboard India arrives amid unprecedented international attention on the Indian music market. In January 2025, Coldplay broke global attendance records with 223,000 fans across two shows at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad—the largest concerts in Asian history.

Ed Sheeran completed a six-city tour in February, selling 120,000 tickets and performing in smaller markets like Shillong and Indore previously untouched by major international acts.

The numbers tell a broader story. Diljit Dosanjh’s 2024 Dil-Luminati tour sold 200,000 tickets across 10 venues in under 10 minutes, demonstrating the viability of touring beyond Delhi and Mumbai. Travis Scott, Guns N’ Roses, Green Day, and Shawn Mendes have all performed or announced Indian dates.

Academic and institutional recognition is rising too: Toronto Metropolitan University launched a course dedicated to Dosanjh, developed with Billboard Canada. The Junos added a South Asian Music Recording category.

The Larger Context

Billboard India enters a market in transition. Streaming has democratized distribution but hasn’t eliminated gatekeepers; it’s simply shifted power from music labels to platform algorithms. Live music has exploded, but festival lineups remain concentrated around a small pool of bankable names. Bollywood still dominates cultural conversation even as independent music gains commercial traction.

A credible chart system in India could, like elsehwere in the world, accelerate industry maturation by providing objective benchmarks for negotiations, sponsorships, and programming decisions. Or it could reinforce existing power structures by codifying mainstream success while marginalizing experimental work that doesn’t fit streaming-friendly formats.

Khimani’s bigger ambition involves cultural elevation. She wants Indian musicians treated like global icons — endorsing luxury brands, commanding tabloid attention, shaping fashion trends. “Why am I not seeing one of our top talent endorsing Chanel or endorsing Bulgari?” she asks, noting that even as global brands appoint Indian ambassadors, they default to Bollywood actors.

The Real Test

Khimani has spent her career representing artists in contract disputes, label negotiations, and crisis situations. She knows how the business works, including its exploitative dynamics.

“Over my entire career, people have made it a point to constantly tell me what my lane is and what I should stick to,” she says. “I find it very interesting being told what to do by people who are not at all qualified to tell you what you should be doing.”

She talks about sliding into the DMs of young artists who cannot afford her yet, quietly warning them that a contract looks wrong, or taking on early work for free and trusting the fee will follow once they are successful.

“We all have that one thing that remains,” she says. “If everyone stripped everything away from me, my intellect is my intellect, the ability to think and strategise so that I can help another.”

“That is a gift and that is never going to go away.”