Rising Star: Appar Grover, Senior Art Director, IContract

Born and brought up in Ghaziabad, Appar Grover completed his graduation from Birla Institute of Technology with a BSc in animation and multi-media. During his course, he was a trainee sketcher at a company called Q2A, where he made illustrations. He has done sketches for publications like Harper Collins and Lexia. Doing eight illustrations a day, the job was more of manual work than a thinking process.

“While drawing was good, there was not much of thinking process. I wanted to go deeper into the thinking process and I landed in advertising with DigitasLBi, Gurgaon, in December 2011.”

“I joined DigitasLBi as a flash designer. My first client there was Samsung and I was responsible for the launch of Samsung Galaxy Duo. After that I decided to move further and do art direction and hence decided to move on to Interactive Avenues. Over there, I was handling a creative social media team,” he narrated.

After Interactive Avenues, Grover shifted to GroupM in Delhi and was responsible for handling Nestlé’s Kit-Kat and Nescafe. He did love working on both the brands. In May 2016, IContract Mumbai happened to him. Grover wanted more exposure and probably Delhi wasn’t giving him that. In the last one year, he has got just the right exposure he expected and is quite content with the clients he is working on.

At IContract, Grover has done some award-winning work for Durex and Amazon’s Kindle. He has also handled Kissan, UTI Mutual Funds and Wills Lifestyle to a certain extent. Grover’s work for Amazon Kindle’s ‘The Storyteller’ campaign has received a few awards as well.

At the age of 27, Appar Grover, Senior Art Director at IContract has to his credit, some remarkable work for brands like Durex, Kindle, Kitkat, Nescafe and Samsung. Grover also has an impressive career – having begun with DigitasLBi in 2011, then moving to Interactive Avenues for a short while, then with WPP’s GroupM in April 2014 and finally with IContract Mumbai since May 2016.

Grover has learnt a lot while working on various management issues. Crisis management and handling situations is something he has learnt well in the last six years. Quoting an instance, he tells us that during the launch of his campaign for Samsung’s Galaxy Duo – 2 Way, the website had not gone live. The client was updated about the same and was furious with them. But his senior handled the situation just right. “If you are good at providing solutions, then you are good at everything,” he added. She taught him how to tell the client a solution to the problem in such instances and move on. Since then, Grover has indeed focussed on being calm.

Asked about the best work he has worked on, Grover said, “I enjoyed working on Kit-Kat and Nescafe. Nescafe was a dream brand which I got to work on. Some of my posts are on my Behance profile.”

While he has had some great stints with the largest agencies in India, Grover in his free time loves to read. He has an affinity towards Indian fiction authors like RK Narayan, Sudha Murthy and RK Laxman.

One of Grover’s greatest strengths is his mother. “My mother will handle the toughest problem in the world without complaining. My brother is also one of my strengths.”

Another role model is his favourite author – Sudha Murthy. He continued, “Her writing, the kind of life she has lived, the simplicity. Being such a great personality, still a simple life she is living. I can see my mother, friend and everything in her. That’s why she is my role model.”

Grover’s typical day at work begins at 11 am in office and he tries to be in bed at 11 pm on weekdays. On weekends, he likes going to the movies and spending time with friends. Grover is also quite a movie buff and enjoys watching good Bollywood movies. He loves to mimic at times – be it Bollywood characters or others. Not to forget that Dubsmash is one of his favourite past times.

His Durex work:

MoodBoard kindle Storyteller:

Some of Grover’s illustrations and work:

https://www.behance.net/groverapaar

Info@BestMediaInfo.com