Published on: October 8, 2026
New Delhi, October 8, 2026: Veteran Media Executive Ishita Chauhan announced the launch of Cultural (Mis)fits (CMF), a new culture company built for India’s counter-mainstream creative economy, following a year of building quietly behind the scenes.
CMF works with artists, creators, culturalists, communities and ideas shaping what comes next – developing talent, building cultural IP, creating experiences, producing stories and connecting emerging cultural worlds with audiences, brands and global opportunities.
CMF launches with a multidisciplinary roster including Rushil Ranjan, Abi Sampa, Eshna Kutty, Gopal Datt Tewari, Aakash Odedra, Nirvair Rai, The Orchestral Qawwali Project led by Rushil Ranjan and Abi Sampa, Songs of Bulbul, Jupiter Pe Juice and CMF-owned Music IP – Ruhbaru. The company will operate across Digital Media, Artists & Culturist Network, Content Studio, Live Experiences, Cultural IP’s and Merchandise, allowing ideas to move from discovery and storytelling into communities, experiences, IPs and commerce.
The philosophy behind CMF comes directly from Ishita’s own career and what she has observed along the way. “I’ve always been a misfit, from classrooms to boardrooms. I was never particularly interested in fitting the mould. I was more interested in questioning why the mould existed in the first place. After more than 20 years across media, brands, content and culture, I wanted to build something around my instinct that there are no misfits, only cultures the mainstream has not yet learnt to hold,” said Ishita, Founder, CMF.
At the center of CMF is one question: where does culture live when the mainstream isn’t looking? In specific worlds, and CMF builds alongside them. As audiences increasingly organize around specific interests, identities, aesthetics and communities, cultural influence is becoming less about mass reach and more about depth of connection. CMF calls this Cultural Intimacy: understanding specific cultural worlds deeply enough to build meaningful participation within them, rather than simply buying attention from the outside.
Ishita began her career in retail before moving into leadership roles in media, entertainment and consumer technology. Across those chapters, she has consistently worked at the intersection of changing behaviors, emerging audiences, brands and culture. These experiences have shaped her instinct for questioning categories, backing unconventional ideas and recognizing potential before it becomes obvious.
For the artists and cultural voices CMF works with, the promise is simple: you do not have to be more conventional to be more valuable. CMF exists to build the context, infrastructure and opportunities around what makes them distinctive. In that sense, Ishita is not simply the founder of Cultural (Mis)fits; she is the architect of its central idea that the people the system struggles to categorize may be the very people worth building around. CMF is now expanding its network of artists, creators, culturalists, brands, institutions and global partners across India and beyond.
For brands, CMF offers an inimitable proposition: intimacy at scale. Rather than asking how a brand can reach the largest possible audience, CMF asks which cultural world it can meaningfully belong to and what it can contribute.
“Reach can be bought. Cultural relevance must be earned. Our job is to find the people creating cultural capital everyone else hasn’t learnt to value yet, and help turn it into sustainable economic opportunity,” said Ishita.
