RAJ KURUP

Raj Kurup starts CreativeLand Asia; agency to focus on youth ( May ‘8,2007, ET)

Within ten days of quitting as regional creative director of Grey Worldwide, adman Raj Kurup has floated his own creative outfit, CreativeLand Asia. Joining him in the venture is his art partner from Grey, Vikram Gaikwad, and finance professional Ajay Nair, who recently resigned from the post of CFO at Leo Burnett India. The agency will commence operations in June.

Kurup, however, maintains that CreativeLand won’t function as a typical ad agency — it will instead offer solutions across verticals like advertising, film production, content creation and licensing. “It’s not about integrating lots of services under one roof. It’s about having an integrated philosophy of creativity across everything we offer,” he says. CreativeLand’s focus will be on marketing to the youth across Asian markets. “We are on the verge of commissioning an Asia-level research to get an overview on youth. We are also investing heavily on buying data and building proprietary tools,” says Kurup.

Based out of Mumbai, CreativeLand aims to have its first international office in Kuala Lumpur by the second year of operation. “One of the early objectives will be acquiring one big regional account serviced out of Kuala Lampur,” Kurup says, adding that he intends striking strategic alliances with Malaysian companies in areas like market research, production, animation and content generation.

Kurup, who has financed the venture, claims CreativeLand has already won four businesses. “We’ll start with a capitalised billing of Rs 35-45 crore,” he says. Yet, the agency will pursue a purely fee-based remuneration model, and will “aggressively set performance-based incentives linked to objectives”. While Nair and Gaikwad will have stakes in the company from day one, the intention is to provide all employees stock options by year two.

Speaking about the start-up, Gaikwad says it was a shared passion for creative work that convinced him to join Kurup. “I’m excited about what we can achieve in these new areas,” he says. Nair, for his part, is drawn to the bigness of the idea. “I’m attracted to the future projects that CreativeLand will be getting into. My role is to guide the business and achieve the long-gestation objectives that we have set ourselves.”