Two engineering friends Lohit Bhogaraju and Prudhvi Gagarin started their digital marketing agency Chitraastra to popularise music and independent musicians across the Telugu states. Lohit’s fellowship at the ISB in Advertising and brand management complemented Prudhvi’s skills as an ad filmmaker. The two had learnt music but gave it up for their academic commitments. Yet with music being nothing short of a passion, they envisioned Chitraastra to be a Telugu version of ‘KappaTV’. A first step in that direction has been their music series ‘Encore’, whose second season opened across their YouTube channel recently.“After we worked extensively with the film industry, we realised that there is no exclusive music industry here. Our plan to enter the digital arena stemmed from our desire to create a parallel industry for independent musicians,” says Lohit. With an initial aim was to encourage budding talent across colleges, they founded Capricio then. The first season had them organising a live show featuring a few bands and independent musicians. As word-of-mouth surrounding Encore spread wide, registrations for season two multiplied, giving them the liberty to pick the best of the lot.
The duo wishes to pick musicians who’re dedicated solely to music. This is because musicians who are constantly juggling their interests don’t do justice to either of the worlds, they feel. Through Chitraastra, they wish to focus on producing more originals, which is necessary to go beyond market and venue needs which compel a balance between Bollywood and Telugu music. “Bands generally fall prey to demands of organisers and evolve around that limited horizon. A band is about creating something new,” feels Prudhvi. In terms of a viewer count, it has taken time for netizens to embrace originals, but they’re hopeful to progress over time.
For every established musician like Sai Charan or a Pranav Chaganty this season, Chitraastra has also brought the talented amateur singer Pranavi to limelight after she earned popularity with her ‘Shape of You’ version with 14 languages in it. They have also recently added the band Infinity from Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology to their lineup. In terms of the shoot, they help the band in booking the location, invest on the set and ensure a promising result. They plan to segregate the music videos of Encore across solos, bands and classical categories respectively.
Chitraastra is contemplating to enter another state soon and has plans for a similar strategy with Hindi music videos too. “We’re willing to produce more music videos with independent bands and give them access to our recording studio at a nominal charge,” mentions Lohit. Making this a financially viable model is a challenge, so they hope sponsors will pitch in for the next season, for which they’re in talks with a series of established singers.
Lohit and Prudhvi aren’t done with creating their own music yet, “We will learn it soon,” they add.