In this interview with Everything Experiential, Freishia B speaks about managing the challenges posed by Covid 19, her experience of digital events and more.

Meet Freishia B - An Emcee, YouTuber, TedX Speaker, and Tv Presenter. Her YouTube channel Whack is one of the biggest in India where everything gets discussed from science to economics. 

Beauty begins when you begin to be yourself. In each event, Freishia Bomanbehram has hosted, she has been engaging the audience by truly being herself. She is a young and bold woman who stands out on the stage with her confidence and never looks back. Having a natural flair of picking up the right points and keeping the momentum going at the event, she has many big shows accredited to her name like Band Baaja Bride 5, Filmfare Awards Red Carpet, Dubai Diaries, India with Marriott, Lakme Fashion Week, GQ Man of the year, India Couture Week and more.

In this interview with Everything Experiential, Freishia B speaks about managing the challenges posed by Covid 19, her experience of digital events and more.

Excerpts:

How are live artists adjusting to the lockdown and COVID times?

I cannot speak for other artists, but what I did see is that once the lockdown started there was an explosion of insta lives that took place. I was fortunate to get virtual hosting events pretty instantly. Within the first 2 months I had done 3 campaigns, I hosted 5 videos for HDFC Life , 6 lives for Taiwan Excellence (with Brand Brewery) where we had artists from different walks of life in conversation with me on the brand's page. I also hosted sessions for EEMA. Most of these got a traction of 5k-8k views and thats when i knew that this the way ahead. With everything happening online, the live events industry went through a big transformation as well. How did you adapt to this change? I adapted very quickly,  I immediately called for a green screen, ring light and made sure that my internet connection was on par. 

Tell us about some of your recent events.

Other than the ones I just mentioned , the recent most memorable one is the IAA Privacy laws book launch that I just did. It was shown worldwide and shot against a green screen, executed by Hansa events. I also have MIssion Million which is again a worldwide concert to raise funds which has been curated literally out of this world. The effects are all in space and I am hosting it.

Has the online transition made your job easy? Tell us some of the positives of hosting events online?

I don't think it has made our work easy. In some cases I have seen that clients are still a little apprehensive when it comes to different ways of engaging audiences, but the more we try to innovate hopefully the more accepting they will become. I am now my own backstage manager, stage set up, lights, and show runner, so an artist's scope of work has increased beyond what we did regularly. It's not just about 'ghar bethe show karo'. But the positives, of course, are that I am not living out of a suitcase like previously. But everything said and done I miss the energy of a live audience, interacting with people and making sure that the overall energy levels are high up.

Tell us some of the challenges that you have faced while hosting a virtual event.

The Internet is definitely one thing, and I don't mean mine. I was once hosting and the other guest kept dropping out and it took him 15 minutes to get back online, but then I have always interacted with audiences and had to on the spot come up with backups.

The other thing is the instant reactions, in a live show you know when its going well, here it's pretty Ram Bharose as you can't see everyone's faces.