It's important for founders to give to creative freedom to teams: Aditi Shrivastava

Shrivastava, Co-Founder and CEO of Pocket Aces, was a part of the e4m Play Streaming Media Awards jury for creative and talent awards

by e4m Staff
Published: Mar 19, 2025 5:11 PM | 2 min read

Aditi Shrivastava, Co-Founder and CEO of Pocket Aces, who was a part of the e4m Play Streaming Media Awards jury for creative and talent awards, highlighted the importance of creative freedom for teams within an organisation, asserting that no two projects should be handled with a singular approach.

"I think it is truly important for the founders or management of any organisation to give a lot of control creatively and execution-wise to the teams on a particular project. Firstly, no two projects are the same, and if you had unilateral control over everything, then they would all start sounding similar. At Pocket Aces and especially at Dice Media, which is our long-form arm, we're trying to do lots of different types of stories," she said.

Providing examples, she illustrated the diversity in content produced by Dice Media, "For example, some of the stories that were nominated here—one was a show about karate in a small town, which is Karate Girls. Another was a pure rom-com love story, Half Love Half Arranged. Both of these are so different, and so you have to give the control to the creators of each of these shows so that they can bring that uniqueness out."

Further, Shrivastava emphasised the diversity of nominations and the detailed discussions that took place among the jury members to ensure a fair evaluation.

She concluded, “My fellow jurors and I had really expressive discussions about choosing between all of the nominations. We've tried to be inclusive across various formats of content and also across various talents. Some talent is coming from mainstream cinema, while some are digital-first, and they're competing on a fair stage."