Tiger Baby Roars into Unscripted Content With Diverse Indian Stories

Tiger Baby, the production company founded by celebrated Indian filmmakers Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, is making strides in the unscripted space with a slate of documentaries and series that aim to spotlight untold Indian stories.

The company has just unveiled Taira Malaney’s “Turtle Walker,” a documentary chronicling the extraordinary journey of conservationist Satish Bhaskar, who walked nearly the entire coast of India in his efforts to protect sea turtles. Akhtar says, “He’s such a hero that doesn’t think he’s a hero. He just walked nearly the entire coast of India, which helped the sea turtle not go into extinction. I mean, it’s such a big story, and he’s just one guy.” The film, which will premiere at Doc NYC, won the prestigious Grand Teton Award at the Jackson Wild Media Awards.

“We’re both fans of so many genres, and we want to do everything. And this one specifically, it’s coming from that conservation space. We’re both personally very interested in the environment, in conservation. I’m a bit of a farmer myself, so it just felt like a really nice project to back,” Kagti says.

Another project in the pipeline is “In Transit,” a nine-part docu-series produced in collaboration with Amazon Studios. The series focuses on transgender stories from India, an aspect of Indian society rarely explored in mainstream media. “There’s a trans community, and nobody really talks about that community, the people that identify as trans from heartland India. Where are they coming from? What are their lives? How are they dealing? What are they going through, and what’s their experience?,” Akhtar says.

Akhtar has directed popular films such as “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara” (2011), “Dil Dhadakne Do” (2015), and “Gully Boy” (2019), which premiered at the Berlinale and was India’s official entry for the Oscars. Kagti’s directorial credits include “Talaash” (2012) and “Gold” (2018). The duo has also collaborated on several projects, co-writing films like “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara” and “Gully Boy” and the acclaimed Prime Video series “Made in Heaven” (2019 onwards) and “Dahaad” (2023). Film “Superboys of Malegaon,” produced by Amazon Studios, Tiger Baby and Excel Entertainment, and directed by Kagti, played recently at the Toronto and London film festivals.

Tiger Baby’s first release in the unscripted space was Prime Video’s  “Angry Young Men” (2024), a three-part documentary series that captures the personal and professional journey of legendary screenwriting duo Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, known collectively as Salim-Javed.

Akhtar explains Tiger Baby’s unscripted commissioning philosophy: “Every kind of story has its own medium and mode of narration, and we watch a lot of documentaries. Both of us are documentary fans, so it’s a very familiar space for us. Nobody in the mainstream, in the industry is really doing it. And actually people struggle to get these stories out. So if we can enable it, and we love it, we will.”

“We’re open to anything that grabs us, and then you figure out the best possible way to do it,” Kagti adds.

Beyond documentaries, Tiger Baby is expanding into other areas of content creation. Tiger Telly, their advertising and brand collaboration arm, has been operational for about two years.

Meanwhile, music label Tiger Baby Records, a venture with Kagti and Akhtar’s frequent collaborator, the musician Ankur Tewari, is preparing to launch its first artist, with plans to explore indie and folk music from across India. “TBR is not just music. I mean, we’re starting that way, but it’s more about, like everything to do with sound. So it could be podcasts. We are also thinking of developing radio plays,” Kagti said.

As for their overall strategy, both filmmakers emphasize the importance of emotional resonance over commercial considerations. “It’s not just to do it for the sake of doing it, it’s really to move us. It’s just about developing work that resonates with you, and then you feel like because it’s resonating with you, it will resonate with other people,” Kagti explains.

Akhtar elaborates, “If we can with everything we do, give a larger understanding of something, or an empathy of something, or just inspire another thought, that would be incredible. That’s the pursuit.”