If you feel that you don't have to do it but you know if you do it, you will come out as a winner then going for those things makes sense.
B.E. Manufacturing
M.Sc. Mathematics
EXPERIENCE
Nov 2018 – Present
The Teaser Company
Co-Founder and Creative Director
A D2C exclusive marketing company built on creativity, innovation and disruptive thinking!
Dec 2017 – Dec 2018
Blue Vector
Content Strategist
Blue Vector was a video production company and I joined as a copywriter. I was writing for FNB Brands based out in Gurgaon and majorly because that was an art first company.
Sep 2017 – Oct 2017
The Minimalist
Copywriter
I was handed over to the department of minimalist videos which made small videos (15/20-second videos) . I was always given some brands that we used to jam on. They were good days of learning from great copywriters. I was directly in touch with the founder. So that way I was very intrigued by how they are building this system and their culture towards driving creative exercises. Whatever strategies those copywriters taught me, they are still very well ingrained in me.
QnA
A significant part of my day involves creative direction. It involves brainstorming on what ads would work for brands on digital platforms. The teaser company is majorly into creating brand ads for Facebook, Instagram, where you drive people from these platforms to the stores and websites. 30- 40% of my workday is majorly about creative direction. I usually wake up at 5 - 5:30 am to give myself enough time, i.e., at least three to four hours of working out, meditation, yoga. This helps me to sustain my mind, brain, and physical synergy. On weekdays, I spend the first few hours on team management i.e. taking the briefs et cetera. Noons are for team alignment and team assignments followed by a couple of hours for client meetings and organizing the meeting schedules for the upcoming week. The second half of my days majorly involves thinking about new ideas and adding new ways to attract people to the product and content marketing. I spend my weekends thinking about the long term vision of my startup, i.e., how we position ourselves in the market, and how we can create a better structure to scale up better.
No no! College was like 10:30-11 am, but I made a conscious call because a startup in its initial days is harsh with negligible salaries and we are just sustaining ourselves. The first six-nine months were tough, but I had expected that. No one will trust you initially. But as soon as the team starts building, you are responsible for their life also. Once that responsibility comes over to you, you have to start to plan everything. You plan your time, so that you give time to yourself, the company, as well as family. Last March, I read 5 am Club, which is a book about the habits of entrepreneurs and how it helped them grow their company. I used to get up at 7:30am or 8 am during that time, then cut half an hour by half an hour every two weeks till it got reduced. Then it became a habit after continuously doing it for 30- 45 days.
Initially, I was a copywriter. That was my entry point to marketing in general. I did copywriting for a year and a half, but I felt like I could create a much better environment and grow at a much faster pace in a startup of my own rather than an organization. I met my co-founder, who's also from BITS Pilani (four years senior to me). He was like six-seven years into advertising. We both brainstormed on what our strength was and how the market is evolving. Companies like Mama Earth, Yogabars are all new age brands. They have very innovative marketing strategies and are directly selling to the customers through e-commerce. Teaser was initially a creative consultancy. But now it is more dedicated to the creation of conversion ads for digital brands. This space is evolving at a very fast pace, we never know what it is going to look like tomorrow. Five years down the line, everything might be disrupted and then you have to destroy your own structure to create a new one.
Digital marketing is a broad slang term where you can fit in a lot of new-age companies but at Teaser, we kind of focus on creating high conversion ads that basically involves psychological thinking of what drives humans, how you can drive purchases, and how you attract people. Hence, it's a lot about psychology and sociology. In contrast, the other side of it, which is performance marketing, is in terms of understanding the technical side of data, i.e. data science, data analytics, etc. It's a mix of both understanding humans and robots and making sure that you create synergy between both. We hire a mix of right and left sides of the brain: creative brains (who bring these fresh ideas) and the tech people (designers, visual artists, visual strategists and data scientists). This is what we hire currently and this is what we are going to hire in the future as well.
These are slangs that are difficult to understand from a layman’s perspective. A content writer is usually good with craft, in terms of telling the person about the topic of the blog or topic of what you want to write. On the other hand, the content strategist is more towards understanding the objective and the marketing side of things, analyzing what to do, then how to do it. There is another thing, content strategy, which is more about thinking about what to do. There are also directors, creative directors, executive directors. As you go up the ladder, the planners are at the higher level and the executionists are at a lower level of doing things that the brand has to achieve.
We majorly look at what blogs they have written. We ask for their best piece (according to them) or ask them to go through the teaser and find the most relatable piece or the one that makes more sense to them. In the interview round we gauge their values on the basis of which the person is driven on in terms of absorbing new identities and absorbing the briefs after listening carefully to where we want his or her attention to be. Craft is something that can be practiced and learned but values are something that is very difficult to change. It takes some time to learn sales copywriting because that has certain objectives that you have to fulfill prominent to marketing. You need to understand the customer as well as the brand. A creative exercise, a simple quiz, or a simple ad writing exercise helps us evaluate their thought process. For designing, I give it to my art person because she is a talented NIFT graduate who did her masters from the UK. So that way she takes the call on how the composition is and how to visualize those things. In terms of the tech, my other co-founder takes care of hiring.
I think for engineers most of them took engineering because maybe our parents took a call and the thought process is that engineers are well paid and will be in a safe, secure environment. But now it's not like that, all fields are open and even artists are paid much more than tech jobs. It depends on how good you are. It’s about the talent you have and what you bring to the table. Organizations can afford to pay you, it's not about the lack of funds.
I think being an engineer first is the story of almost all entrepreneurs. Cracking those 11th-12th exams is not as exciting as being an entrepreneur. The friends that I made on campus, the people that I met on campus, the series, the documentaries that I saw on the campus influenced me a lot. That time entrepreneurship was evolving in general in India as in there was a lot of matter coming up. Other startups were coming up and there was a new course in BITS (New Venture Creation) which was introduced in our second year. I think redBus CEO InMobio (he was from BITS) came and then they motivated us to go towards entrepreneurship. That was one step in kind of opening my mind that this is a path that seems much more interesting. I think the writing was just a parallel thing I was doing, like writing novels and writing for brands. It was just a childhood memory that TV ads were so good that I always felt who the brain is behind it, and that curiosity drove me to that. Business plus writing is majorly marketing currently.
In your early 20s, you should not be scared of taking risks. was always looking for something that I could do for 30 -35 years, so it had to be something very interesting and exciting. Otherwise back then, I was just a person who got bored very easily. Now, I am not. In fact, I'm contented with a normal life, but, in my twenties, this wasn't the case.
Taking that leap from my engineering job was also a consequence of my "not-so-happening" life back then. So I took that leap. I did come across some thoughts which held me back from choosing the artistic life, because I knew it would be difficult for me to cope up with the new field, but I definitely knew that once I start working hard, someday or the other, it is going to pay off; after all, art and design is a rapid-growing industry in India. I always knew I had a knack for art, so it wasn't that tough a decision. Although my sister and my mother were quite hesitant at first because I was switching from a high paid job to writing, but ultimately, they knew it was the best for me.
The first experience was my own novel. My 10th and 12th-grade marks in English were horrible, like below 70. I'm very bad at structuring things and writing in that flowery craft, but I was always good at stories. I thought I should explore copyrighting because I was fascinated by TV ads. Luckily, I met the co-founder of The Minimalist on my Europe trip (when I was in my fifth year of BITS). When we met, I shared my novel, he shared his startup work, and then I thought this is a good way to start. I was also writing for Filtercopy. Since he became a friend, I got into Minimalist. The first few months writing for the brand was a different world. When you are writing a novel, you can write anything. But from a brand angle, there are some filters that are to be taken. So that's where I learned copyrighting initially and then it evolved. I think I was reading a lot of books- like books from copywriters. I think no background is needed, it's just curiosity that usually drives people in advertising.
It’s called Hundred Million Oblivion. It’s a fictional novel. Some lessons from that novel are real, but it was majorly on how money drives your relationship and your psychological balance towards people. While jamming with some friends that topic arose, it stayed in my head and I wrote that novel. I actually finished the novel within 30 days because I was not even attending classes. I published it and I even gave it to my teachers and friends. In the first four-five months, around a thousand copies were sold. I also shared it with some of my international friends. That was a good six-nine months of my college time in the fourth year.
I think now the whole world is an open place. So you can start writing on Instagram and you'll get that attention. Act as if you yourself are writing for some brand. Start writing on your feed about your views and about new ad ideas that are not even there. Imagine yourself to be working for the brand and do that stuff. So that if you apply somewhere, people will know that It's something that you have been doing for a long time. There are a lot of digital marketing agencies, LinkedIn is an open platform where any DM can land you the founder. It only depends on how eager you are to join. Sell yourself so that they can evaluate them and there.
There goes a lot of thinking or briefing about what is the objective of an ad. People are fascinated with the end result a lot, whereas there is a lot of hard work that goes on the backend in terms of understanding the problem that you are going to solve. Copywriting involves strategically training your brain to work with constraints around it and still be very creative. When you're writing a novel there are hardly any constraints, but when you're writing for a brand, there is an objective. There are certain budget constraints or certain resources that you have. You have to learn to be strategic in the identity of that brand because there is a certain persona, certain filters that the brand carries. So, fixating your mind with all these constraints and still coming out with a great idea is something that takes some time and practice. And yeah, once you have that muscle, then organically you won't take any time because your mind will be adapted to fulfill all these filters and still write better.
I think I learned a couple of good things from Germany. The research culture is very 'slow.' People take five years to do a two-year program, and they go on year breaks etc. Even though my work was not too much, I had time to write for these blogs. I learnt a lot of cultural stuff like not disturbing your colleagues on weekends. They were very punctual in doing things. In terms of the benefits of living in India, emotionally we are much more caring. On the other hand, it was very hard to fit in the culture there and even to find a good friend whom you can share your thoughts with. That way there are pros and cons of the culture there.
The initial days were great. I was a part of the Department of Minimalist Videos where I made small videos (15/20-second videos) on brands. I learnt a lot from great copywriters. I was directly in touch with the founder. I was very intrigued by how they are building this system and their culture towards driving creative exercises. Whatever strategies those copywriters taught me, they are still very well ingrained in me.
Blue Vector was a video production company and I joined as a copywriter. I was writing for FNB Brands based out in Gurgaon and majorly because that was an art first company. Minimalist is a thought-first company and Blue Vector was an art-first company in terms of their video team being great; editors and visual artists were really creative people, but their thinking team was not as strong. Because of the culture there, I started learning video editing and the basics of storytelling in terms of how you edit in software, how you think etc. These editing skills help me visualize brand ads much faster and directional manner. Blue Vector also had a great environment. During my last few months at Blue Vector I told my founder that I want to start something on my own and he said “if you find it to be too tough for you, come back, we are open and if you feel you have found your thing then go on.” These startup founders are very cool people. That's why entrepreneurship is becoming a thing because the big organizations have their own challenges and startups have their own fun.
What we have seen is usually a bigger company trying to buy what a smaller company has the niche or the specialization around. But that is not an exit strategy for us. We are profitable, we are scaling at a much faster pace and it's all bootstrapped. We have some ideas for building new products and environments for which we might need funding. We go for funding in case we feel there would be a good investor and a person who can back us up and also matches with what we are trying to do.
India is the hottest market at the moment. It is a great time to get into entrepreneurship because you already have people who have done it and paved the path. Seed funding is not an issue anymore. Even talent is not an issue anymore in India. After Covid, you can connect with people from different locations. So, just go for it and whatever idea you have in mind, test it out.
For writers, the best thing you do is keep on writing and growth will follow.
Do that absurd thing that is bothering you, be it public speaking or if it's some course where you feel butterflies in your stomach. Talk to the girl you always wished to. Take that fear out of you because if that fear builds up, trust me it will ruin your life. Always trying new things, otherwise, it might get boring in life.