In March 2007, S Raj Kurup, 32, gave up his job with Grey Worldwide to set up Creative Land Asia, a creative hotspot. Ask him about the prospects of his start-up, and he replies: "I want to build a country and not a company."
Call it bravado or preparing ground for a soft landing, independent agencies have struggled to find a foothold in the Indian advertising industry. They are often elbowed out by multinational agencies and find it difficult to retain people.
Kurup is aware of the uphill task ahead of him. The biggest threat is getting labelled as a "small agency," says he: "In today's world, no one wants to associate with something which is termed as small. Thankfully, we have managed to overcome that aspect."
What Kurup is talking about is that Creative Land Asia has Parle Agro brands such as Frooti, Appy Fizz in its kitty. The whole Parle business is estimated to be in the range of above Rs 30 crore (Rs 300 million).
While with Grey, Kurup was working on the Parle brands, but yet both Frooti and Appy Fizz didn't receive too many accolades, though Kurup is proud of the Appy Fizz campaigns he had crafted.
"It was something unique and not attempted before and did create a buzz in the market." Frooti, meanwhile, has still not recieved the kind of buzz it did since the days of the Digen Verma campaign around 2001.
Kurup, who was with Lowe earlier, fell in love with the profession after being randomly picked for a copy test. While studying at Xaviers' in Mumbai, Kurup says he used to create his own ad copies for various products in his classroom lectures.
The print campaign for TCI, which recently won an award at the Cannes festival, was done by Kurup and his team at Grey.
But the road ahead can be tough. As a senior creative director of an agency puts it, "It's long and tough road for independent agencies and survival is a bit tough but not impossible."
Still, some in the industry feel Kurup could do well, now that he is on his own. Pratap Suthan, national creative director of Grey India, for instance, feels that Kurup is an "extremely creative guy".
Meanwhile, Kurup claims that there have been people from countries like China, Malaysia, who have expressed their desire of working with his venture and are looking at more options like these.
"Apart from this we are also looking to work with a few of global clients as well." "Let me use an old cliché for the future goals and objectives, 'sky is the limit'. Oh, and by the way, employees at Creative Land Asia are handed out passports and not identification swipe cards," says he.