From Wall Street To Digital Entertainment
They were doing banking and finance jobs in Wall Street, did their engineering in the USA, Oh My God! That means there were living the American Dream.
This is also the dream that almost every middle-class Indian holds: Engineering, management, USA me naukri aur phr chokri
But today, they are the founders of Pocket Aces, an Indian media company that runs Filter Copy and Dice Media among others.
Interestingly, their names start from ‘A’, Ashwin, Aditi and Anirudh. They have used the aces from their pockets wisely to make Filtercopy a household name today. So, their company is rightly called Pocket Aces.
In this particular podcast, Aditi, one of the co-founders of Pocket Aces talks with Ranveer, the host about building this company from scratch and about the content world in general.
Fun Fact: Dice media, which comes under Pocket Aces are the creators of one of my favourite shows, “Little Things”. Any Biryani monster fans here?
Aditi and Anirudh were childhood friends who grew up in Kuwait. Ashwin grew up in Dubai.
Anirudh and Ashwin went to the same engineering college in the USA and were roommates too.
Ashwin and Aditi are now married to each other.
Golmaal? You are not getting confused right?
Let’s simplify this.
So, all three of them were NRI’s who grew up in the middle east, then went to the USA for education, did jobs there for some years and then came back to India and started this company.
How did all this start?
All three of them are from middle-class service-oriented background and are the first entrepreneurs in their respective families.
Now, Ashwin was the guy who was interested in content right from college days. He had also done a diploma in filmmaking from the New York film academy in 2010.
Ashwin found out that filmmaking was much more interesting than his finance job. There were also uncertainties in wall street at that time due to the financial crisis in 2008. That’s when he thought of having something on the side as many people had lost their jobs during that period.
He left his job in 2011, came to India and worked in Reliance entertainment for some time and after that, he helped set up Junglee Pictures, which comes in the Times group.
At that time, Aditi had also left her job and was working in Social development in India while Anirudh was doing his MBA in the USA.
Ashwin along with Anirudh started Pocket Aces in early 2014. Initially, the idea was to make it a film production studio that makes feature films. They were outsiders, so to make a mark in films directly would have been difficult. Many such problems came in their way, so they decided to move digital in 2015 and that’s when Aditi too joined them.
About Pocket Aces
Pocket Aces’ goal is to solve the boredom of the youth of the country through their content which tells the tales of millennials.
Today, their products include Fitercopy, which focuses on short shareable videos. Dice media, which has made web shows like Operation MBBS and Little things. Gobble, also a youtube channel that makes food and lifestyle videos. They also have an app called Loco, which is a game streaming app.
As of now, Pocket Aces reaches 50 million people weekly!
How having a background in Finance helped them?
The founders of Pocket Aces credit their background in finance for this success. They applied their research, analytical and business skills to make Pocket Aces one of the top digital media companies in India. They approached everything with a data-driven mindset. Aditi tells that many creators are good at making videos but they don’t concentrate on the business aspect of it which is as much important.
When they started making videos, all of the creators were focused on youtube. But Facebook had also started Facebook video at that time in 2014. She tells that people will search for you on youtube when they know you. So, Facebook was the obvious platform for them to build awareness because if someone likes their video, it also pops up on their friend’s timeline.
Other interesting insights from the podcast!
Aditi also talks about the pros and cons of having a co-founder who is also your husband as with her and Ashwin. Like she talks about how Ashwin and she have made a rule to never discuss work at home.
Aditi says that the youngsters of today know or at least start thinking about their purpose in life very early than people her age used to.
( She is 36 now)
That’s very true, I feel. Even I would have not been writing this article now if I was born say 10–15 years ago. Instead, I would have been studying for my useless exams which teach me nothing about real life.
She also says that youngsters today get bored very quickly, they have less patience and they expect quicker gratification. This is so true, but I feel that the problem of falling attention spans is not just limited to youngsters. Even I see my parents spending so much time on the phone and they tell me to use phone less!
But if you came till here to read this article, you are amongst the 1% who still have patience. Pat your backs for yourself.
Aditi also tells us about where the content world is going.
She tells that the content world is evolving towards User Generated Content which means TikTok, Reels where there are not just a bunch of few popular actors, but there are multiple individual creators like we see today. People coming forward and facing their fears in a camera-shy country like India is really great!
In short, ab raja ka beta raja nhi banega, raja wahi baenga jo uska asli hakdar hoga!
Also, gaming is the sector that is seeing heavy growth she tells. Suppose, you like a show or a movie, max how many times are you going to see it? 10,20,50. But if you like a game, you can play it thousands of times. ( Pubg is coming back soon guys, congrats to all Pubg lovers reading this)
There has been a massive increase in game streaming. Just go to some Youtube gaming videos and see how many views they get, you will be awestruck! Game streamers are just normal people who play well. Again, this is an opportunity. Also, esports is in a boom.
They also talk about the game of scaling up a business and raising money, design thinking and company culture in this podcast. Nothing specific I found to write about that here.
Overall, this podcast has great learnings for you if you are currently in the content world or want to go there. And surely this one has an amazing story of normal middle-class people making it big!
Credits- Pocket Aces | Beerbiceps Youtube Channel
Full podcast-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwyljfMnuvM
