Creative consultants – Glitch: The perfect blend of the right brain and the right brew

Glitch is one of those places for which every creative guy would trade his left brain in order to work there. Glitch is a creative consultancy that believes in the shock value. People call it brand management, copywriting and marketing but they like to call it, brandalism, copyfighting and mocketing and that is what lets them survive and thrive in this industry. They know their clients, they know what exactly they want and they also know the beer their clients like. This is what makes them tick and to know more about the Glitch, Jubin Mehta from YourStory.in gatecrashed their party:When did Glitch happen? How and why?

It was the dark winters of December, 2009 in a world clouded by the recession storm…. sounds too Harry Potterish…

The glitch has been an idea hovering around our heads for a while. As Television professionals working at creating content for the youth for over 3 years, we came to realize that the reign of the idiot box was over, the youth with attention spans of 15secs and less were moving and establishing their base on the internet. The youth likes choice, and are impatient. They refuse to wait for the VJ to play their song or wait for the network to bring the latest season of Entourage to the living rooms. So we put together our little tech knowledge from engineering days, some creative abilities picked up over time and an in-depth understanding of our audience to start Glitch. Or in short, we just wanted to go to office in shorts and drink beer for lunch while pretending to dish out earth shattering ideas that would revolutionize the Earth.

What does the right brain of Rohit Raj have to say about himself? Tell me something about your team as well.

What started off as a company of 2 people, Rohit Raj (Right brain) & Varun Duggirala (Left Brain) inside the living room of their apartment in December 2009, is today a company of 23 people between the ages 18-28. I head creative’s at the glitch while Varun, co-founder heads the business side of things. The rest of the team includes Graphic designers, Animators, TV producers, free thinkers and beer drinkers. No clear hierarchy has ever been maintained here, so designations on visiting cards range from Son of a glitch to Hunterwaali depending on their attributes and attitudes.

What does glitch do? Tell me something about your clients as well.

The glitch started off as a content providing studio for the youth on different platforms like Mobile TV and Web. But over the last one year, we have diversified into 2 clear segments. We have a TV production entity that generates content for youth channels like Channel [V], Bindass, Disney etc. Our latest show on air is Bollywood OMG. We also have our Digital wing, which specializes in taking brands and engaging their target audience on the new media platform. So we work with youth brands and provide them with solutions to promote themselves on the web. Everything from a new show on TV that needs to engage its audience online or a youth brand like Quiksilver/diesel that is looking to promote itself to the audience on the web, we provide creative solutions.

What is the market size that you are trying to capture? Who do you target?

Our Clients have mostly been youth centric clients as we understand them the most. Channel V, Bindass, Disney, Diesel, Quiksilver are some of the major clientele we have. The market size is Huge! India is one of the youngest countries in the world today with the youth population only second to that of China. With the flurry of brands trying to get their attention only the ones who stand out get noticed. This is where the Glitch comes in.

Who are your competitors?

I think there are quite a few digital agencies in this country, but very few who are creating innovations. Taking an ad on TV and putting it on Youtube doesn’t make it a digital-exercise. Making an interactive ad that engages the viewer and lets him participate does. Very few agencies are able to cope with that kind of innovations. It takes the youth to understand the youth. So, I think any young agency with young creative brains inside is our competition. It’s like Bill Gates once said, “Im not worried about IBM or Apple as competition, I’m worried about a young whizkid sitting somewhere inside his garage who has the next big idea. That is my competition.”

How is the mood at Glitch? Are you looking to hire?

The mood at the glitch is Mad! People are Mad, they say mad things, they do mad things, and they see mad things. And Mad is good. We believe in a theory that says if you enjoy work, then it’s not work and that’s what everybody here does. Nobody works. There are no set timings, you can come in whenever and leave whenever as long as deadlines are met. Beer is an incentive and we take it seriously. The best part is when after 4 continuous days of work and no sleep whatsoever an obscene deadline is met and the producer looks up and says, What’s Next…bring it on bitches! We are currently hiring, looking to build our social media team. We realize that slowly but steadily, a lot of brands are showing interest in out of the box ideas that we generate. So we are looking at building our social media team. Also been on the hunt for the next graphic guru. A graphic designer is the need of the hour. We have always hired freshers. That has been our work model. We nurture fresh talent straight out of college.

What is your revenue model? How much revenue does Glitch generate?

We have been trying to build ourselves as a pioneer in new media services. There isn’t a lot of money in digital in our country as of today as it’s a new medium and lots of clients are yet to see its full potential. Digital spends as minimal compared to television spends by most brands. Hence our TV wing helps compensate for this and let us thrive and do some exciting work. When we see exciting work, we take it up without bothering about the monetary gains. But if it’s boring corporate av’s they want us to churn out, they better be paying us well is our simple mantra. We generated a turnover of close to 3.5 crores at the end of the first year. Hopefully we should double that this year if all goes as per plan. More importantly, as long as we are doing fun work and having a blast we are happy.

Where do you see Glitch in 5 years?

We all dream of an office like Google. Hopefully we get there in 5 years. More importantly, we hope the brands open up to digital and see the potential in this medium and open their purses. Everybody knows that digital is the next big thing but nobody knows when. We are hoping with our fingers crossed saying it’s before the next 5 years.

Any message for the readers at YourStory.in?

I hope if any brand managers are reading this, they give us a chance to show them the potential the internet and new media has to take their brand to newer levels. If any beer drinkers are reading this, please drop in for some beer. And if you are both, then just marry us.

We own a spot on the net at www.whatistheglitch.com and we respond to [email protected]