What a Story - Top video Production and Creative Agency
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What a Story is a creative agency that specializes in Modern Solutions for Modern Businesses. It offers video production, branding, and development services. A dream which started in an 8x8 feet room is currently holding 300+ clients and a family of creatives.
What a Story is not just a general creative agency that knows a couple of designs or video software. At What a story, the team understands the technology and enjoys it! They are and have been at the consumer side, creator side, and seller side too. This experience makes What a Story a more reliable partner than current agencies.
StartupTalky interviewed Mr. Vikas Tiwari (Founder & CEO, What a Story) to know the organization's startup story & the roadmap ahead. In this article, you will get insight on How What a Story started, its business model, funding, growth, USP, future plans & more...
What a Story - Company Highlights
| Startup Name | What a Story |
|---|---|
| Founders | Vikas Tiwari, Himani Verma, Raunak Hajela |
| Headquarters | Hyderabad |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Industry | Video Agency/Video Production |
What a Story - About and Vision
What a Story - Industry/Market Details
How What a Story started
What a Story - Product and USP
What a Story - Founders and Team
What a Story - Name and Logo
What a Story - Business Model and Revenue Model
What a Story - Launch and Marketing Strategies
What a Story - Challenges Faced
What a Story - Current Status & Growth
What a Story - Funding
What a Story - Competitors
What a Story - Tools Used to run Startup
What a Story - Recognition and Achievements
What a Story - Future Plans
What a Story - FAQs
What a Story - About and Vision
What a Story is a creative agency that specializes in Modern Solutions for Modern Businesses. It offers video production, branding, and development services
Vision
Its vision is to become the world's most impactful creative agency of the 21st century by creating effective, scalable, and personalized solutions for businesses. So, they can help their audience to achieve more and make a change in the world!
The startup's short-term goals include improving the processes, capturing the market, and building a strong reputation. This will redirect it to reach the big goal; which is to help 1000 businesses to get noticed and understood so that both businesses and consumers get empowered and create greater opportunities. What a Story is building its studio to shoot and produce videos for medium-size businesses as well!
The core belief of the team
The team believes that if ideas are communicated right, it ensures wider opportunities, better choices, and faster growth.
What a Story - Industry/Market Details
The startup is targeting modern businesses like SaaS or Mobile Apps etc; Where there is innovation, there is What a Story.
Target market size
- It’s huge and growing
- Mobile apps are increasing day by day
- SaaS accounted for 20% of the overall enterprise software market. (Source: crikle.com)
Future prospects of the Industry
Everyone is using some application and 73% of businesses switch all systems to SaaS. This means the demand will increase more! If there is any new business, then they need videos to make sales, make themselves a part of the current solution or if the idea is new, then educate the audience about it.
Chayanika Goswami
How What a Story started
Inspiration to start What a Story!
What a Story started in 2015, with a dream to give the most compelling story to every business and topic! The team wants to make the world understand the technology and its impact.
All of its founders have been working in the same domain for a long time and understand its pain points very well. They decided to start an agency where every member of the team is a vision partner and the customer’s trust is the ultimate revenue. So, the founders structured the company accordingly; And hence, the core team decided to start this agency!
Research and Validation
The service industry is a validated industry. If one can provide good customer satisfaction and growth to the team, then one can get the kind of success the company aims for.
Journey of Ideation, Designing & Prototyping
The startup What a Story is a Video production and Global Creative Agency with a chain of offices across India.
A dream that started off in 2015, to give the most compelling story to every business and topic! A dream to make the world understand the technology and its impact. A dream to build an agency where every member of the team is a vision partner and the customer’s trust is the ultimate revenue.
During the early days, the team realized that modern businesses were going to need simple communication and collaboration, as that will be the key. So, they structured the company accordingly. They wanted to build an agency of the best creative yet service-minded team on the planet. The quality should become the first parameter to judge the agency, not the fancy office space. The team was going to get work preference. Home or office didn’t matter. Creativity & Quality did!
The journey started with a small motion graphics video which got a huge success very late, then T-shirt designs which flopped, then a branding project which made it through, and then a video shoot which was quite upbeat at that time, and many more. What a Story started offering service to the first 2-3 clients and they were very happy and satisfied with their work. They are still working or in contact with What a Story. The projects were raining and the startup started hiring many people. Soon a team of 2 became 18. The current company size is 25.
Then came the need for an unexpected organizational restructuring. The team learned the lesson from its own experiences and from others. They restarted the agency in Indore with a new team and this time, better than before. Its spirit became stronger in 2019 when What a Story won the Clutch Award for Best Creative Agency in India.
Today, What a Story is the top video production and creative agency in India, operating with 25+ amazing talents from all over the country! It set a new benchmark in the Creative Industry and Impacted billions of lives through its clients. A dream which started in an 8x8 feet room is currently holding 300+ clients and a family of creatives.
"We had simple dreams and we are still conquering them. We were stupid enough to think that ours could be the first Indian creative agency listed in stock exchange. We are still stupid to talk about that! " says Vikas Tiwari (Founder & CEO, What a Story)
What a Story - Product and USP
How does the What a Story work?
Once you reach out to What a Story, you can get a free consultation and diagnose the business problem. Based on that, the agency will advise you the solution which you can opt or try DIY.
What problems does What a Story solve?
Here are a few problems that customers may have & What a Story solves -
- The first impression is not good
- Leads are not coming. Know How to Generate Leads in Sales - 100 Proven ways
- Sales are not converting
- Business is not making enough Profit
- Not gaining Trust and Credibility
- The ROI of Ads are not good
- The audience is not getting what the company does
- Brand image is not good
- The Pitch Deck is not impressive, many more;
What a Story's USP and Innovation
What a Story is not just a general creative agency that knows a couple of designs or video software. At What a story, the team understands the technology and enjoys it! They are and have been at the consumer side, creator side, and seller side too. This experience makes What a Story a more reliable partner than current agencies.
What a Story is a place where Strategy, Creativity, Technology, and Service-minded people, merge together to explain complex things in the easiest way possible.
Rishabh Rathi
What a Story - Founders and Team
The founding team of What a Story continues Vikas Tiwari, Himani Verma, Raunak Hajela, and Nagendra Ch. (former co-founder). The current company size: is 25.
About the Core Team
Vikas Tiwari | CEO, What a Story
Vikas Tiwari is the CEO, he was working as a video professional in the industry for the last 8 years. He also has a visual branding background.
Himani Verma | Director, What a Story
Himani Verma is the director, she was working as a branding and design consultant for many small and big brands!
Raunak Hajela | CTO, What a Story
Raunak Hajela is the CTO, he is into core tech, which is the backbone of any service business today! He has developed many tech products and consulted startups!
Nagendra Ch. | Bd & Sales, What a Story
Nagendra was a co-founder but left What a Story earlier due to his personal issues. Now he is with the startup as an advisor and leader in his department!
Work culture @ What a Story
What a Story follows the open door policy and collaborative culture! Have certain and limited expectations from each member. Below are the Key Actions the startup expects from all members:
- Communicate (Do not hesitate to speak your mind. Ensure positive & professional communication)
- Collaborate (Listen to other's ideas too. It doesn't mean that one isn't good. The other person might have a better idea sometimes)
- Complete (Own your project. Find all the means to finish it better & faster)
- Learn (Competitors are our teachers. Our real-life experiences can be our work pointers. Bring them here & share them with the company too)
Also Read: Importance of Work Culture in the Success of a startup
Hiring Funda of What a Story
What a Story tries to match 3 Characteristics in every member whom the team wants to work with -
- Clear (Clarity will improve the work & reduce the time required. Understand the requirement first)
- Creative (Try different ways to do a task, do not be afraid to fail)
- Effective (Focus on the output, not the input)
"Find Creative People, Provide them enough resources, and give them enough freedom, whether it’s related to ideas or working style" Vikas added.
What a Story - Name and Logo
The common thing in all the co-founders was 'The Story', which connected them. Each story is mind-blowing and inspiring. They will chat about that sometime and then one may say “What a Story!”
The team wanted the same impact for its clients and make content that can inspire their audience! And honestly, each business has a story to tell, and What a Story wants them to invite the audience in their story.
What a Story - Business Model and Revenue Model
As of now, What a Story has a general business model, Project to Project and Recurring.
- Price Range: 50k – 20 lac in between. It varies from project to project.
- Profit margin: Currently, around 20%
What a Story - Launch and Marketing Strategies
- Asking their own people to give some work and referrals.
- What a Story made a few viral designs in the early days, which helped it to get eyes in the market.
- What a Story's strategy was simple: Do Quality work so people can refer
- The partnership was definitely useful for a business like What a Story. The startup did multiple partnerships with web, graphics, digital marketing, and other agencies.
- What a Story started providing services to solve the problem instead of delivering the scope of work. It focuses on the actual problem and then consults its customer in the right way to solve it. It could be What a Story or others, but the problem has to be solved and the client has to have a good impression. The true value of money is the team's promise!
- What a Story has a zero budget spend on marketing. The startup is just near to finalizing the CMO who will decide the future of What a Story's marketing strategy.
Dev Kumar Padhy
What a Story - Challenges Faced
In early days, everything was challenging apart from making its own logo!
The one major challenge, What a Story faced was the Price, which it wanted to get paid by customers. The startup does personalized work which takes longer than usual but has a way more impact than general communication design or videos. So its pricing was slightly upmarket too which was hard to explain to clients. So, the team started documenting each step of work and started showing it to the clients! Also, video testimonials played a big role in its sales pitches!
Due to lack of sales conversion, the team tried to put its hands in low-budget creation but since the team is built with a purpose to make high quality solutions, they couldn’t make it happen.
What a Story - Current Status & Growth
- Operating locations: Fully Remote but it has a presence in multiple places in the country. Head office is in Hyderabad
- Revenue: Seven Figures
- Profit: 15-20%
- Userbase: 600+ Clients
- Notable clients and partners: Cyient, HCL, MakeMyTrip, Tahaluf, IMI Mobile, Shuttl, Conneqt Business
"We have bigger and ambitious plans for our Video Department. Setting up our end to end video studio so we can optimize the cost for business owners is an important plan! You will see a lot of news on our website in the coming days!" Vikas added.
What a Story - Funding
What a Story is a bootstrapped startup.
Jeenal Jain
What a Story - Competitors
"We can’t say that they are competitors. Being a creator, we need inspiration from many other companies, cultures and people. We get our inspiration from Sandwich video, DemoDuck, YumYumVideos, and couple more!" says Vikas Tiwari, CEO @ What a Story
What a Story - Tools Used to run Startup
Apart from the Google apps and Adobe apps, What a Story uses QB, Clickup, Clustdoc & many more!
Niku Mandal
What a Story - Recognition and Achievements
- Top Indian Design Companies in 2019 by Clutch,
- Top #5 Explainer Video Production by Clutch 2019
- Best Animation Video Production 2019 by DesignRush
- Top Animation and Multimedia Company by goodfirm.co
- Top Video Production Company by Superb Companies
- Agency of the year 2020 – Ad World Master
- Featured at: Inc42, vidsaga, FilmLifeStyle, SmartWebCreator
What a Story - Future Plans
What a Story has amazing plans for the future which include services expansion and product development! To conclude everything in a simple line - “What a Story wants to be the world's most impactive end to end video agency”
What a Story - FAQs
What is What a Story?
What a Story is a creative agency that specializes in Modern Solutions for Modern Businesses. It offers video production, branding, and development services.
How does What a Story make money?
As of now, What a Story has a general business model, Project to Project and Recurring. Price Range: 50k – 20 lac in between. It varies from project to project. Profit margin: Currently, around 20%
Who founded What a Story?
The founding team of What a Story continues Vikas Tiwari, Himani Verma, Raunak Hajela, and Nagendra Ch. (former co-founder). The current company size: is 25.
Is What a Story bootstrapped?
What a Story is a bootstrapped startup.
How does What a Story work?
Once you reach out to What a Story, you can get a free consultation and diagnose the business problem. Based on that, the agency will advise you the solution which you can opt or try DIY. It offers video production, branding, and development services.
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