Karan Johar says he was ‘traumatized’ by Dharma Productions acquisition meetings

Karan Johar recently sold 50% stake of his company Dharma Productions to billionaire businessman Adar Poonawalla’s Serene Productions for ₹1,000 crore. In an interview with CNBC TV18, the filmmaker opened up on how the meetings leading upto the deal left him “traumatized” with all the business jargon. (Also Read – Karan Johar says Adar Poonawalla is ‘a dear family friend’ for many years: ‘Someone who’d allow me my creative vision’)
“I didn’t know I had a value. I found out. I’ve to say this. I’m probably not going to come across as clever. I want to come across as who I am. I was traumatized in so many of those meetings. I’m a creative artist. I don’t know what’s a ‘put’ and a ‘call,’ a ‘drag’ and a ‘tag.’ He (Adar) kept saying, ‘I’m going to drag and you’re going to tag.’ I know ‘drag’ in a totally different way. I know what a ‘tag’ is in the price tag I pay in the retail zone. I know ‘put’ and ‘call’ in a very different way altogether. I had no idea what was happening when those Excel sheets would come in front of me. Your reality is staring at you. You think you’ve done something so wide and vast, and then there’s a value put. So when people tell Adar, ‘You’ve paid so much money!’ I say, ‘Has he really?’,” Karan said.
“The dynamism displayed by Adar Poonawalla was almost inspirational to me and everyone involved. We cracked major part of this deal on a Zoom call. He was a superstar in that. He had a few questions he wanted answered and then he said, ‘Okay, where do we sign?’ And we’d been deliberating for years! Then he comes in, sweeping us off our collective feet. This is how I’d have loved to do business if I could afford to. And I can’t afford to, of course. He can,” added Karan.
He also claimed that Adar’s acquisition has made him more responsible and accountable to his company more than ever before. It gave him “exciting sleepless nights.” Karan said Adar has made him more accountable to his company that his childhood friend and Dharma Productions CEO Apurva Mehta or even his father, late filmmaker Yash Johar, couldn’t.
Yash Johar founded Dharma Productions in 1980, before Karan took over the business after his father’s death in 2004.