By Karan Murarka

Post-school, so many stories of boys or girls are defined by their parents – and something very similar happened to me.

Coming from a Marwari family, I was always under the impression that Commerce a.k.a “The Modern Day Baniya Course” was something I was going to be pushed into. But I guess my SSC mark sheet had other plans for my life.

From a mediocre student just about managing to pass in every subject to getting 74% in the big bad SSC exams, my life changed. My parents decided to admit me into the ‘Super Cool’ Computer Engineering Diploma course. Without a clue about how boring, taxing and generally soul-sapping this diploma would be, I passionately jumped into the course. Soon enough, not only did I realise that it was futile to my brain, but also a complete waste of my time. But it surely gave me a different perspective of life. And, to be honest, if nothing else, my problem-solving skills improved.

After that, I worked at the Bombay Stock Exchange in their digital team and subsequently pursued my MBA (Retail) from Welingkar Institute of Management. From being an average student in 2000, I was a now a computer engineer, a digital Operations and Finance guy at the BSE, and an MBA Retail, Innovation & Design diploma holder from Sweden.

All these credentials landed me in Reliance Entertainment, where I was about to start my YouTube journey. I was responsible for the online distribution of Reliance Ent. content, which included sales of home video to Youtube. In the next 8 to 10 months, I realised that it was not only fun to Youtube, but it could also be a sustainable business model.

In 2012, three of us from Reliance quit our jobs and started a venture called Click Digital Studios – now well known for the Shuddh Desi Series on Youtube. After a year of acquiring a better understanding of the online space, one fine day we decided to part ways. After which I founded the company, KARA Studios.

As a child I was always fascinated with the short stories narrated to me by my parents and grandparents. Back then, there were not too many players who had short-film channels on Youtube. I was a visiting faculty at Whistling Woods International, where I was approached by many of my students with short films. KARA Studios was at that time producing its first web series, Love In, and also a kids channel called The Tiny Tots.

It so happened that a film titled Lunch With My Friend’s Wife happened to reach me. I found it extremely gripping for a 15-minute film. That day, I started the channel The Short Cuts with a few student short films, and of course, Lunch With My Friend’s Wife.

Today, that film and The Short Cuts are one of the most popular short films and short film channels in the country. The film has more than 85 Million Views, and the channel has more than 300 Million views.

The journey began with that first film going viral. Very soon I realised that with my channel growing in subscription and viewership, I could not solely depend on acquiring readymade short films. We decided to get our first short film produced; it served as a pilot to understand the technicalities of production. Even though we had produced a web series, the process of short-film production was very different.

I had a few advantages. Firstly, I drew insights from the few short films uploaded on The Short Cuts to understand why they were so successful. A lot of analysis later, the engineer and MBA in my head identified some ingredients that I could use in a nice story that could work. After several writers narrated their ideas to us, we happened to come across a beautiful story that we could produce. A few friends and I developed the story into a script, and it was ready to be produced. With no idea of what actors and other resources charge for such small projects, we started the journey of putting together a team.

On 24th December 2015, we uploaded our first short film, The Stolen Christmas Carol. This film was meant to target the Christmas online traffic. It worked. Within no time, the film was accepted by the online community. It was mentioned by Indiatimes and Storypick as their pick of the festive season.

Since then we have produced and acquired some of the most popular short films on the internet. We have faces like Adil Hussain, Ayesha Raza, Brijendra Kala, Sumit Gulati, Riya Sen, Ali Fazal, Lauren Gottlieb, Madhoo, Kamini Kaushalji, Anupriya Goenka, Sahil Vaid and many more reputed actors who have worked in our short films. We have since not only produced short films but also pranks, music videos and raps for the channel. But the one thing that this channel had begun with, “Short Story Telling,” still remains the core. It is still what The Short Cuts and KARA Studios are known for.

Today, The Short Cuts is one of the largest short film channels in the country with more than 635,000 Subscribers and 345 million-plus views. We have started sub-channels like The Short Cut: Incredibles, Humour, Food, Fashion to join the brand we have created so far. Our upcoming channels: Music, Health & Care, Fitness. This is only the beginning.