This startup is the one-stop solution for all your corporate video and event needs

Raasta Studios is a video production house catering to corporates, institutions, NGOs and events.
This startup is the one-stop solution for all your corporate video and event needs
This startup is the one-stop solution for all your corporate video and event needs

With just a camera in hand, Sai Kumar and Prem Kumar were determined to start a production house and pursue what they loved best – shooting videos and making films. But in a market that is crowded with production houses and aspiring filmmakers, they knew right from the beginning that a B2C model for their business wasn’t a sustainable idea.

There was a very large untapped opportunity lying in the B2B segment. After all, most corporates and organizations have a slew of requirements, be it promotional videos, presentations and events through the year.

With the idea of tapping this market, Sai and Prem founded Raasta Studios in 2013, catering to corporates, institutions, agencies, NGOs and government bodies.

The services offered by Raasta Studios are coverage of events, ad films and commercials, explanatory videos of products or services, branding and corporate films, 2D and 3D animation, industrial and training videos, interviews and testimonials, promotional videos and campaigns.

One of the USPs of Raasta’s service, Sai says is that they understand the content that the client wants through a comprehensive pre-production, production and post-production video and use technology to execute the project in a fast pace.

“When a client approaches us, we go with a questionnaire, which has questions like what they want, why, how it is unique, the budget, and the timeline. And once we get that information, we have an internal meeting and understand the project and send them a proposal,” he says.

When it started, it only owned 20% of the equipment, while 80% was rented. But today, Raasta is the proud owner of 80% of its equipment.

While Raasta Studios provides a range of services, it is now organizing it into different verticals. It has launched two brands Amplify and Virtual Raasta. While Raasta studios works on the rest of the services, Amplify is a vertical dedicated only for events and Virtual Raasta for Virtual Reality video production.

Virtual Raasta

With the concept of Virtual Reality becoming popular across the globe, there is also a rising need for videos to be shot in that mode.

“There is a huge potential in the VR industry. Distribution is also coming with various tech players like Samsung, HTC and Google making VR devices. There is no other player doing this either in India,” says Prem.

In fact, a research report says that 75% of the Forbes’ world’s most valuable brands have used Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality to engage with customers or employees. The report also adds that these big brands are invested in developing the technology.

Virtual Raasta has identified travel, immersive journalism, education, retail, sports training, sporting events, political news, music, medicine and real estate as some of the areas that have potential in VR production.

In order to create videos for VR, a 360° video needs to be shot allowing consumers to choose where they wish to look. Virtual Raasta makes such videos.

It soft-launched this brand in the beginning on May and has already served some clients with its incubator T-Hub being its first client. Virtual Raasta shot a 360-degree video of T-Hub’s entire office space.

It plans on tapping corporates to make presentations for them in VR so as to keep employees and clients engaged for longer. It is also talking to educational institutes to make career films for them.

“Films used to be the ultimate mode of engaging and involving people but VR can go beyond that and make you experience something that is beyond reality. That is what we will offer,” Sai says.

Amplify

In 2017, understanding the huge potential in events, Raasta launched a brand Amplify exclusively for the meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) industry. “Doing production for an event is a completely different process. The work is more impromptu, the videos have a short shelf-life and clients often need a number of videos for lesser money. That is why we felt like events has to be a completely different vertical,” says Sai.

For every event that Amplify works on, it has a range of services that begin even before the event starts.

Prior to the event, it does previews, promos, countdowns of the event. During the event, there are services like a Facebook Live, a cinematic coverage of the event. It even does vox pops, interviews of speakers and guests and post the event, makes a video of the highlights of the event which it calls the Glimpses video. All in all, there are 10-15 services offered for a single event.

For any project, Raasta studios has a structure that ensures a fast-tracked service. It claims to have finish some projects in just 72 hours. And one of the main reasons behind this, it says is its extensive use of technology.

 In a span of four-and-a-half years, Raasta studios has done over 1000 projects and has catered to over 270 clients.

Some of the noteworthy names Raasta counts as its clients are TedX, government of AP and Telangana, Indian School of Business, Cyient, Godrej Properties, Lanco Hills, and Nasscom.

It has also worked on concerts like Sunburn and Sensation.

Every projected is charged on a case to case basis. “We understand their requirement, the number of days of shoot, the kind of services required, animations required and then accordingly charge them,” says Prem.

Raasta studios currently works out of its incubator T-Hub in Hyderabad. "T-Hub played a very important role in our growth as a whole. Opportunities provided by T-Hub in terms of networking has helped us in expanding our business and our team from 14 to 32 within the span of just one year. A lot of support also does pour in from our ecosystem partners at T-Hub making it a team effort,” Prem says.

Raasta is now also working on a new vertical Raasta.TV, where it wants to make documentaries on founders of startups, outlining their journey with the idea of inspiring people through these documentaries.

Having spent four-and-a-half years building an organized process of doing business, Raasta Studios now wants to focus on expansion.

While Raasta has clients from all across the world, it plans on opening offices in Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Delhi in the near future and eventually also look at Chennai and Mumbai. It currently executes everything from Hyderabad.

But the larger focus, Prem says, will be on Amplify and Virtual Raasta. The company hopes to grow these brands and eventually make them self-sustainable companies with dedicated teams for each brand. And Raasta Studios will be the parent company.

This article has been produced with inputs from T-Hub as a part of a partner program.

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