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KV Sridhar's Hyper Collective is a new age agency where 21 collaborators will work together

Sridhar has brought together four core pillars of strategy, technology, creative and data. The agency has already got on board brands like Nestle India and DHFL. With a nine-member young team, Sridhar believes that the game-changing business model will enable clients to forge seamless connection between brand, technology and consumers

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KV Sridhar's Hyper Collective is a new age agency where 21 collaborators will work together

KV Sridhar's Hyper Collective is a new age agency where 21 collaborators will work together

Sridhar has brought together four core pillars of strategy, technology, creative and data. The agency has already got on board brands like Nestle India and DHFL. With a nine-member young team, Sridhar believes that the game-changing business model will enable clients to forge seamless connection between brand, technology and consumers

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | March 8, 2017

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On October 18, 2016, KV Sridhar decided to quit SapientNitro as the Chief Creative Officer and moved on to start something of his own. Sridhar announced the name of his agency, 'Hyper Collective', on November 25, 2016. But other than the name, he did not reveal much, leaving everyone in suspense. Now after burning the midnight oil, when the structure is ready and things have fallen into place, Sridhar made the formal announcement and launched his new agency on March 7.

Today's evolved consumers communicate with brands via several touch points -- both online as well as offline. Moreover, they are adapting technology, digital innovations at a much faster rate. This has posed a challenge for the brands to be able to connect with and provide unique experiences to these omni-channel consumers.

KV Sridhar KV Sridhar

Explaining, Sridhar said, “What I am trying to do is to bridge the entire strategy, brand and creative to technology and data. I have brought all together to solve clients' problems. As technology does not have creative and consumer buckets and advertising agencies do not have technology, there is a gap between technology, digital, creative and media company delivering.”

When asked if it is a risk to launch a property of this sort, Sridhar replied, “It's safe to take a risk and quite risky to be safe. Risk is when you don't believe in the idea. I believe in the idea.”

Based in Mumbai, a strategic team at Hyper Collective, helmed by Sridhar, will team up with its collaborators to offer services to brands, institutions and government organisations. As of today, Hyper Collective has 21 collaborators on board. Additionally, it has support of brand gurus, independent marketing consultants, media buying agency, PR agency and celebrated filmmakers.

Over the coming months, it aims to further strengthen the collective by bringing on board collaborators offering niche, disruptive services; for example, Ping (broadcast, content and distribution), Supari Studios (video content), Meraki Studio (VR/AR/360 film content), Experience Commerce (digital marketing), Fanatics (digital storytellers), Windchimes (digital experiential agency), Tookitaki (predictive analytics), Moonraft Innovation Labs (art + design + technology) among others.

So, does Hyper Collective bring specialisation for clients?

Answering that, Sridhar said, “I bring generalisation. I bring all this together into one fold. I'll bring value to the client by bringing end-to-end solutions. It's a collective model rather than my own expertise within my own umbrella, which is very tough. Today all the young kids want to chase their own dreams. Good talent and expertise don't lie in big companies. All the start-ups are not with the global five companies. I am catching this flourishing talent and putting it altogether.”

Hyper Collective is a young team with around nine members, where Saket Kondiparthi is the Executive Director, Dipankar Mukherjee is the Chief, Ideas and Innovations, Devang Buddhadev is the Business Lead, Priyanka Tilve takes care of the Content, while Sriti is the Strategy Lead. Indira Iyer heads Creative and technology and Devansh Parikh handles Design, Samhita Kondaparthi is the agency's Visual Design and the Photography Head.

The agency's first client was Nestle India and it also works with brands like DHFL, Primerica Life Insurance and BBG Group in India. The agency will work on four core pillars of strategy, technology, creative and data.

HyperCollective aims to bridge this gap. With agility and modularity built into its core DNA, Sridhar believes that Hyper Collective's game-changing business model will enable clients to forge seamless connection between brand, technology and consumers. It has built a collaborative ecosystem where it's bringing together skills set required to deliver brand experiences and provide solutions to con.

Sharing his vision during the launch, Sridhar said, “The need of the hour is co-creation, collaboration with swiftness and agility. There is no single agency that excels in all four areas of content, communication, technology, and strategy. Through Hyper Collective we have got on board some of the sharpest minds in these areas who have been pushing the envelope through their work.”

He further said, “Our clients will have full access to all our collaborators at all times. As required, collaborators can be on-boarded in short span of time. Furthermore, we can add newer competencies in a blink of an eye. Collectively, we will orchestrate brand story seamlessly across platforms to cater to today's always on world.”

Hyper Collective business model will be the same as any other agency. The client will give a fee to Hyper Collective, which will be shared among the collaborators responsible for the client's work.

Commenting on his partnership with the agency, Vimal Kutmutia, Founder & Strategist, 17Seven, said, “There is no model like this where you find collaboration of companies that are experts in their industry. You will find 10 different companies but they will be working individually. This is one platform where you will find all the industry experts together. Clients won't be out of resources. They can find the best resource at their disposal. I think that's the biggest opportunity that I can work with. The best part is we get to learn a lot with other industry experts.”

Dipankar Mukherjee, Chief Ideas and Innovations, added, “Unlike traditional advertising agencies, we are not stuck to same processes and large team structures. We are very agile and keep ourselves lean. We have built a network of extremely talented people. Getting the talent is really the challenge here. Talent, creativity and inspired thinking is what the future would require.”

Hyper Collective has been in 'stealth mode' for the past several months, working for iconic global brands and a handful of large Indian companies. Acting up on Nestle India's vision, it has helped set up first-of-its-kind Live Content Studio in Nestle's office in Gurugram. It's for the first time ever in India that a FMCG brand has attempted such a progressive, future facing endeavour to create content. It took Hyper Collective four weeks to set up the model for Nestle. Hyper Collective along with its collaborators -- Ping Digital Broadcast Network and WindChimes Communications, and Nestle India's brand team -- has been churning out original branded content, social campaigns, as well as experiential content.

At the launch event, quite a few eminent industry people like Sam Balsara of Madison, Santosh Padhi of Taproot Dentsu, Raj Kamble of Famous Innovations, Chandrasekar Radhakrishnan of Nestle, Rajesh Kejriwal and Malvika Mehra of Tomorrow Creative Lab were present to support Sridhar for the launch of his start-up.

Hyper Collective Partners:

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