5 Junction Records: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

Anjula Acharia remembers when the one person who had set her up for success told her she was going to fail. And Jay-Z was there, too.

In 2008, Acharia and Interscope Geffen A&M’s then chairman, Jimmy Iovine, were sharing breakfast at a New York hotel. Iovine — who had partnered with Acharia’s South Asian music/news hub, Desi Hits, to develop a Universal Music Group-backed imprint — remembered her previously telling him how much “Beware of the Boys,” Jay-Z’s 2003 remix of Panjabi MC’s bhangra single, had meant to her as the kind of cross-continental exchange that she hoped Desi Hits would foster. So when Acharia stood up to leave the breakfast, Iovine asked her to stick around for a few more minutes… at which point Jay made his surprise entrance.

Acharia, who was in her 30s at the time, geeked out, gushing about her love of “Beware of the Boys” and asking the rap superstar about how the remix had come together. Then Iovine pulled the rug out from under her. “While I was sitting with him and Jay-Z, Jimmy told me that Desi Hits was going to fail,” she recalls. “His words were, ‘I know pop culture, I know a visionary, and this is just way too early. This would be right in 10 to 15 years.’ ”

A Punjabi kid and die-hard music fan born to South Asian immigrants, Acharia grew up in Buckinghamshire, England, devouring music that fused styles from around the world and dreaming of creating a platform that spoke to both Eastern and Western demographics. She was a senior partner at a London-based executive search firm who co-founded Desi Hits Radio as a popular early podcast in the mid-2000s; then Iovine backed Desi Hits in 2007 as a stateside label for South Asian artists after she moved to New York. The pair helped engineer a crossover hit in 2009 with “Jai Ho,” A.R. Rahman’s Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire theme that was remade for U.S. listeners with The Pussycat Dolls added to it.

Read the full Billboard cover story here.