Hrutul Patel brings a hexaimmersive experience to Ahmedabad

YOUFORIA, a hexaimmersive experience has been brought to Ahmedabad by Hrutul Patel. Hrutul, who wears many hats, speaks to us about storytelling, why he enjoys it and more.

You have been a director and actor in the past. What made you take a shift in your career?
I don’t see it as a shift at all. Everything I do, whether it’s directing, acting, composing, writing, or designing, comes from the same space. Storytelling is just the umbrella under which all these expressions live together. For me, filmmaking and storytelling are technical words for something much larger. In my mind, I am a magician. I want to create experiences that feel grand, emotional, and immersive, basically euphoric!

When COVID happened, I had just finished the script for my second film. For almost a year and a half, we couldn’t shoot it. By the end of 2021, I was heartbroken because the magic of cinema was disappearing. People had moved to reels, OTT shows and short content, and the experience of going to a theatre no longer felt special. That’s when I had a simple thought — what if we could bring back that magic by creating something even more immersive than cinema? But this naive ambition faded quite passively in 2021.

Three years later, after completing my #100weeks100songsChallenge (2022-2024) I decided to curate a storytelling concert using some of those songs. The filmmaker in me came alive again. It joined forces with the composer and lyricist inside me, and together they gave birth to Hexaimmersive. It began as a technical experiment to create a modular, travelling 360-degree setup, but the process evolved into something deeper. What started as an experiment became a new storytelling format that I now live and breathe, and I also modified the dialogues, visuals & effects of YOUFORIA chp. पाथॅ’s narrative as per the newly born Hexaimmersive format.

Why did you choose Hexaimmersive (immersive storytelling) as a career path?
Hexaimmersive was never a career plan. It was the result of curiosity, failure, and stubbornness. I wanted to design a 360-degree concert setup that could travel from one city to another, but nothing like that existed. In my case curiosity + failed experiment is the mother of my invention- Hexaimmersive . We tried many shapes — triangles, pentagons, octagons — and finally the hexagon felt perfect. It had balance, symmetry, and a strange emotional harmony that just felt right.

Once we experimented with a mini version with cross-projection mapping with 6 projectors and 6 screens, I realized that each of the six screens could tell a different perspective of the same story. Sometimes all six show one unified image, and sometimes each one shows something completely different. The permutations & combinations of visual-perspectives which a Hexaimmersive format offers are endless and much better than a unified 360-degree screen. That’s how Hexaimmersive became a storytelling language in itself.
For me, it’s not about technology or equipment. It’s about creating experiences where people don’t just watch a story. They live inside it.

Did you get formal training or did you learn on your own?
I’ve never had formal training in most of what I do. As a kid, I learned sketching, but I’ve never been formally trained as a dancer, actor, director, composer, or lyricist. Many people assume I studied direction in film school, but I actually did a producing course at Whistling Woods during my college years. That producer’s mindset has stayed with me. When I write, I think about feasibility and structure. When I compose, I think like a dancer, because rhythm comes naturally to me. When I write lyrics, I think like a director, because I see every word visually.
All these roles overlap in my head. My songs are born when melody and lyrics arrive together. They’re not separate processes. I think the fact that I was never formally trained helped me stay curious and open. I’m not bound by the usual rules or definitions of what’s right or wrong.
I’ve always lived with one question: why is it not possible? That question has guided everything I do. I look up to inventors more than artists, because I believe invention is the purest form of art. Innovation is my meditation. Art is just how I practice it every day.



Where do you plan to take the art of immersive storytelling ahead?

My dream is to make India the art and storytelling capital of the world. I want to build projects that are as ambitious and iconic as the Sphere in Las Vegas, but rooted in Indian imagination and efficiency. I often think about how ISRO reached Mars on a smaller budget than a Hollywood film. That spirit of creativity and intelligence is what I want to bring into the art world.



The next big step is YOUFORIA: Chapter Kaliyudh, which will debut in 2026. Every song in this album is named after a symbolic weapon — Gada, Talwar, Dhanush, Chakra, Trishul, and Sawal. But it’s not about physical war. It’s about the war within human consciousness in this age — the constant battle between awareness and distraction, dharma and delusion.



After Kaliyudh, there will be more chapters, each exploring a different layer of human experience. All of them will eventually tour together. My larger vision is to create landmark immersive experiences in India that merge storytelling, sound, architecture, and philosophy — and to remind every artist that there are no boundaries between art forms. Everything connects if you stay curious enough to explore.









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