The Indian dream doesn’t get any simpler: get a high-paying job after college, grind till you make it to the top, and live a long, stable life. But Ameya Dabli’s dream would beg to differ. It takes guts to shift careers midway, especially if you’re already living that ideal “Indian dream”. From blending genres at high-profile nuptials (such as the glitzy Anand Piramal-Isha Ambani wedding), to performing for the armed forces, and now his pan-India concert, Krishnaa – Music, Bliss & Beyond, Ameya Dabli’s journey has been anything but conventional.

Today, Dabli is a renowned spiritual musician who has performed alongside legends such as AR Rahman, Ustad Zakir Hussain and Shankar Mahadevan. Back in 2013, though, his life looked very different, with a career in the top rungs of the banking sector. Though he enjoyed his old job as Vice-President at HSBC, “somewhere in my mind I knew I was meant to do something else, I just didn’t know what”. In the pursuit of his true purpose, Dabli was swept away by the dynamics of spirituality and found his medium of channelling it in the form of music. “When I quit my job, I had no income for the first six months, and we had to ensure that we had some consulting assignments or musical concerts we could fall back on,” shares Dabli, who left behind a nearly-10-year career in banking. 

But offers to sing soon followed, and by the end of 2014, he was certain — this was it. He took his first steps toward building what would now become his own company [name]. However, the hustle persists, be it corporate or creative. “The biggest difference now is being able to choose who I work with. I can choose to let go of people I don’t fit well with,” he says, “Compared to your regular corporate job, what music pays is, to an extent, intangible. In the 4000 concerts I’ve played over the last 25 years, I must’ve impacted about five to seven crore people, which wouldn’t have been possible had I stayed in the corporate world.”