Nurturing a creative dream

Advertising startup iWitness Studio plans to bring about freshness to the ad scene in the city

June 19, 2015 09:56 pm | Updated 09:56 pm IST

Abhishek

Abhishek

It was their love for cinema that brought Deepu Nair and Prakyath Narayan together. The celluloid unfolded myriad dreams before the duo, who were then pursuing their graduation. The journey of Deepu and Prakyath since then has been one riddled with risks, and the passion to set off on a creative career path that they believed in, led them to establish iWitness Studio, an advertising agency.

The founders of the advertising startup say that starting an advertising agency in today’s competitive and constantly changing digital world has its own special set of challenges to take into consideration. The company that was registered in October last year got incubated in the Sunrise Startup Village in December.

Incidentally, Deepu hails from Palakad while Prakyath is from Mangalore. The company was initially started in Mangalore before they moved to Vizag. “Sunrise Startup Village was the only reason we came here. This is our first visit to AP and we felt it would be a great opportunity for a venture like ours to be a part of a growing startup ecosystem,” says Deepu Nair, the creative head of iWitness Studio.

The firm today has two more members apart from the founders, Abhishek Shende who is the technical head and Akhil Komath, the design head while Prakyath handles the overall operations. Abhishek and Akhil are based out of Bangalore where the post-production work is done.

Being new to the city had its own challenges, but Deepu and Prakyath decided to turn that to their advantage. In an evolving ecosystem where startups battle against odds to grab the attention of all and sundry, branding is a critical component of the business plan to create a strong identity for their products or services. “We are making an attempt to reach out to these startups and come out with different branding concepts through audio-visuals and explanatory videos,” says Deepu. At present, iWitness Studio has tied-up with three startups and are in talks with other startups that are in the prototype stages. The shoot will begin shortly. They have also done corporate videos for the Sleek Group that has a significant presence in the kitchenware market. Before embarking on his entrepreneurial venture, Deepu assisted an ad filmmaker in Kochi.

While these are initial days for the agency and are filled with a heady excitement, the responsibility of taking the firm to the next level is the next big task for the team of iWitness Studio.

“There is a lot happening in the advertising scene at the national level with ad agencies trying out new ideas in terms of a fresh way of story-telling. In Vizag, the startup culture can bring in that freshness in an otherwise conservative market. One of the advantages that Vizag has is that the ad market is at a nascent stage, unlike a city like Bangalore that has far more production houses than clients,” says the young team of iWitness Studio.

Apart from startups, the team wants to highlight the hospitality and tourism sector of Vizag, which they feel is one of the strong points of the region and needs to be showcased well.

For the moment, their focus is to build a strong creative team with talented designers, artists and cameramen.

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