Subas Giri is a Nepali film producer and a dynamic entrepreneur with investments ranging a wide portfolio of businesses. He is the owner of Subas Entertainment Private Limited, a film making company which he established in 2011. The company is one of the most successful production houses of recent times, producing hits like ‘November Rain’, ‘Classic’, ‘Parva’ and latest release 'Kri'.

His ruthless dedication to filmmaking, ability to take risks and desire to try new methods have established him as a heavyweight of the industry within a short period of time. Giri is the recipient of several awards, including the National Box Office Film Award 2014, two Best Film awards for his movie ‘November Rain’ and two National Awards for his movie ‘Classic’. 

Family and Personal Life

Subas Giri was born to parents Gana Prasad Giri and Satya Devi Giri in Dudhauli, Sindhuli on 10th of November 1981. His grandfather was a landlord. His father is a politician while his mother is a housewife. He is married to Nima Giri, with whom he has a daughter.

Childhood and Early Life

Giri grew up with three sisters and a younger brother in a well to do family in Sindhuli. His grandfather, a landlord, was a very strict person and wanted his grandchildren to take care of the family’s landlord heritage. 

He, along with his siblings attended the Ladabhir Higher Secondary School in Dudhauli. He was a very bright student from an early age. He stood first in his class most often. Apart from studies, Giri was fascinated with other creative things like writing and acting from an early age. He used to write scripts for and direct the school plays. He presented them in various school programs and received wide appreciation from the attendees. He completed his school leaving certification from the same school and joined Dhanusa Science Campus, Janakpur for his Intermediate in Science course. After the completion of his proficiency level studies in Janakpur, Giri came to Kathmandu for higher education. He joined Tri Chandra Campus for Bachelor’s level education. 

Adulthood and Business life 

Giri had come to Kathmandu with NRs 3,000 in his pocket, which his mother had given him as initial expenses. He had a strong will to shred off his landlordly identity from his early childhood. In his own words, he wanted to get rid of the ‘landlord’s hang’ as soon as possible. Kathmandu, the city of opportunity, provided him the chance to do so as it later turned out that the 3,000 rupees his mother gave him would be the last money he would ever ask from his family. 

He stayed with his maternal uncle in Anamnagar for the first one month. Dreaming to take on the world, he started feeling constrained living with his family and left them to live together with his friends in a rent sharing basis. Rents and other expenses meant he had to pay around NRs 1,500 a month for his living in the city. Not wanting to turn to his family for support again, he started teaching home tuition. Coming from a science background and being a bright student, he had no problem finding pupil to teach. He also started advertising on newspapers for home tuition services.  He got many responses to his ads so he started to run the service as a network in 2005. He had already done the hard part, getting students. Now, he contacted his friends willing to teach and started to send them to the student’s houses. He would take the initial month’s income from his friends for landing them the job. That enterprise worked well for Giri and he used to earn around NRs 15,000 a month in 2005, which was not a small sum for a student. He saved around 60,000 rupees in a year and was looking towards other avenues of earning by then. 

He used to meet often with his school and Intermediate friends during the time. Many of them were pursuing higher education in medical studies, lab studies, and biology. His friends saw an investment in polyclinic as a lucrative prospect. Giri was also swayed immediately by the idea and in 2006, he started a small polyclinic in New Baneshwor with his friend Birendra Prasad Gupta. The duo invested rupees 60,000 each and started the polyclinic by renting X-ray machines and other equipment. They used to outsource bigger tests to other places on a commission basis. The polyclinic, Future Polyclinic, started by the two friends in Baneshwor is still running till date. Gupta, who is the first PhD in Nepal in virology and also a gold medalist, and Giri, who has since expanded his business to a number of fields, see the polyclinic as their business child. It was their seed project. Their first real foray into business. 

Foreign employment aspirants looking for medical tests were one of their largest clients. Dealing with them, Giri started learning many things about foreign employment. He was soon attracted to the field and saw it as a viable business sector. However, he first needed some experience before starting the business on his own. His uncle, the husband of his mother’s sister, had a manpower agency and Giri turned to him. He persuaded his uncle to give him a job and agreed to do anything if provided an opportunity. His uncle suggested him to start from the bottom and gave him the job of an office boy. Giri took the job without blinking an eye. He was now studying, looking after his polyclinic and also learning a new business by working with his uncle. In less than a year, he worked his way up to the post of the marketing manager. When he sensed that he had learned the required share of tricks of the trade, he bid his uncle goodbye to start his own manpower agency. 

He persuaded a friend of his in Malaysia to invest in the agency. They started ‘Sharp Human Manpower’ in 2007. Giri was very business minded and he had already acquired valuable experience working with his uncle. The manpower agency did wonderfully well. Giri was now earning very handsomely and the sharp young businessman started looking at other possible places of investment. That was when filmmaking occurred to him as a possible investment sector. Since his childhood, Giri had harbored dreams of writing scripts and stories for films. He had written plays and directed them in school. While in Kathmandu too, he had not stopped writing. He used to write scripts and stories, keeping them to himself. With spare money in his pocket and eagerness to invest in a new sector, Giri looked no further when he once thought about movies.

Film career 

He had a concept in his mind. He was an amateur script writer himself but not wanting to sacrifice the quality of his first project, he urged Raj Kumar Shrestha to write the script and screenplay. Giri did not want to jump full gung-ho into the first project investment-wise. He wanted to be a minor part of it and sought for producers who were ready to invest in his script. He was not very lucky. People did not take him seriously, mainly because he was so young and also because he was a complete newcomer in the field. That was when he decided to invest in the movie mostly by himself. He persuaded his partner in the manpower and a sister in Malaysia to help him finance the project. Together with their support, he moved forward with his first film: ‘Ho Yahi Maya Ho’. 

While making ‘Ho Yahi Maya Ho’, Giri was only focused on making a commercially successful film. He took no care if the film was technically sound or not and just concentrated on making a formula film. His sole aim was to earn money with the film. He consulted friend Nawal Khadka for directors with successful track records in making hit films and finalized Deepak Shrestha as his project leader. Shrestha had made huge hits like ‘Sukha Dukha’, ‘Parkhi Base’, ‘Himmat’, “Taqdeer’ etc. prior to the project. Giri signed marquee actors like Rajesh Hamal and Karishma Manandhar for his film. He had also signed Aryan Sigdel but that did not work out because of constant clash of dates with Sigdel’s other projects. The shooting of ‘Ho Yahi Maya Ho’ began in 2007 but because Giri was new to the industry, it took a lot longer than he had earlier anticipated for the movie to complete. The film was only completed in 2009 but that did not mean the end of Giri’s troubles. Nepali movies were screened on a queue basis in those days based on their date of censor. He had to wait for more than a year to land the screening dates. The film was only released in 2011. Nothing had gone to his plan till now and his worries only compounded after the film’s release. Nepali films were slowly moving towards a multiplex culture, targeting urban audience. Newer generation of actors/filmmakers were coming and viewers also yearned for films with some value instead of just formula films of yore. The landscape of movies in Nepal had changed significantly in those four years, since when Giri started making the film in 2007. ‘Ho Yahi Maya Ho’ bombed badly. Made with a budget of five million, it hardly recovered half a million. Its collection was lower than its publicity expenses.

Giri was very sad with the performance of his first film but he was definitely not deflated. He studied his shortcomings for a year and promised to improve his ways in his upcoming films. In 2014, he reached out to Aryan Sigdel, who he had not been able to cast in his first project. Giri had worked out that he needed to partner with newer generation of filmmakers and actors to succeed in the changing context. He offered Sigdel a partnership in the film in return of his role. Sigdel agreed and ‘November Rain’ was made in 2014. Directed by Dinesh Raut, another new-gen filmmaker, the film did very well at the box office. Investing nine million, Giri made a profit of five million from the film. Prior to ‘November Rain’, only ‘Sano Sansar’ had been shot on huge canvas in Nepal. Shot on huge canvas and employing other new filming methods, the film kick started a technological revolution in Nepali film. 

Giri had and still has an affinity for love stories. That his third project, ‘Classic’ - 2016, was also a love story was not an accident. However, ‘Classic’ was not a run of the mill love drama. It was a story of a blind couple. The film, which featured Aryan Sigdel and Namrata Shrestha, was widely praised and won two out of the five national awards presented that year. Namrata Shrestha swept almost all awards for the female lead while Sigdel and other crew also won multiple awards. The film did not make huge profits but was a breakeven project. It, however, established the brand of Subas Entertainment solidly. It was around this time that Giri started getting suggestions to try different stories and genres. He took these feeds from his friends positively and made ‘Parva’ in 2017 –  a psychological thriller. The film was praised widely by the critics but did not fare very well in the box office. It was not a major flop either, only incurring little loss. Giri remained very happy with the film’s performance and rejoiced the fact that even a difficult and untried genre in Nepal worked out fine, bringing audience in huge number to the movie screens. Audience in multiplexes in large cities liked ‘Parva’ and because of these facts he thinks there is scope for such movies in the future. 

Giri then produced ‘Kri’, which is an action love story. Starring Anmol KC and Aditi Budhathoki, the film is made on a budget of NRs 35 million. Shot with 6K ultra high definition lens brought from Mumbai, action sequences perfected after months of training and employing many modern VFX methods, Giri set new standards with this movie.

Upcoming Projects and Future Plan

Apart from owning a polyclinic and a manpower agency, Giri is also a Director of Aryal International Hotel, New Baneshwor. However, he sees his future solidly rooted to filmmaking. He plans in making at least one movie a year. If things go well, he also aims of venturing into direction soon. Giri is also a distributor, distributing his movies since ‘Classic’ himself. His main aim is to transform Subas Entertainment into a complete production banner, taking care of financing, production and distribution within the house.

His next project will see him tie up with his lucky charm Dinesh Raut again. It, ‘Bhairavi’, will be their fourth film together and will be made with an even larger budget to that of ‘Kri’. To be shot with elaborate sets in Varanasi, Giri believes the period drama will be a completely new experience to Nepali movie goers. 

Starting his career with formula films and failing badly, Giri has now realized that making a good movie is the only prerequisite of success. He wants to keep making good films and take Nepali cinema to greater heights.