News

Shekhar Kapur and A. R. Rahman launch Qyuki

6 Dec 2012

Two of the most celebrated and creative minds of India, Shekhar Kapur and A.R. Rahman launched their highly awaited social media platform, Qyuki Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. Qyuki is born to engage Indian youth emotionally and offer them a journey of creative self-discovery, identity and showcase New Media Premier Content.

Ubiquitous online and mobile access combined with the adoption of social networks has transformed our social engagement. According to the latest study conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are now more than 2.2 billion people worldwide connected online. Currently, India has around 61 million active online users.

Qyuki has closely studied this new paradigm in the digital space, researched the current behavioural gaps in social media offerings to the Indian consumers and developed the building blocks of the platform. At Qyuki, Indian youth will come together to experience and co-create differentiated content with the Experts and be inspired by Masters' creations. They have an opportunity to interact and learn from creative communities with a potential of themselves becoming brands of the future.

Shekhar Kapur, co-founder of Qyuki and critically acclaimed Indian filmmaker said, "At Qyuki, we are creating a world of opportunity, where it doesn't matter where you come from, but what matters is your creativity and the meaning one can derive from it. It's a world where people can learn from established domain experts, showcase their creativity and connect with like-minded people. Ultimately they have the potential to become the brands of the future. This is a hub where I will create compelling content experiences such as Warlord and Animalocity" AR Rahman, Co-Founder of Qyuki and legendary musician, said, "Qyuki will help you creatively explore yourself, open the window for creativity that exists in all corners of India and is a first step to trigger the imagination of Indian minds. Qyuki would be active and focussed in driving creative expression of all art forms. The platform will emerge as a strong medium that will enable Indian youth to follow their creative instinct. Melange, premiered at Qyuki, is content created by young musicians at K M Music Conservatory which showcases the potental of creativity in India." Qyuki offers consumers a complete creative journey and is differentiated on the 4Cs features namely Community, Content, Collaboration and Celebration.

At Qyuki there will be a repository of content created by Masters, content generated by consumers and content co-created with Experts. Qyuki's technology platform has been purposefully developed in house to bring to the consumer a unique multi-modal experience and deployed on Cisco's state-of-the-art datacentre technology.

Speaking on the launch of Qyuki, Poonacha Machaiah, CEO of Qyuki said, "Technology has changed the way we communicate, learn and live. Today we have multiple ways to interact and socialise, be it one-to-one or one-to-many. The core philosophy of Qyuki is to harness this opportunity and take social expression to a different level, where we leverage the power of multimedia, collaboration and social web, to provide consumers a unique experience across the web and mobile platforms. Qyuki will build a strong creative community by offering co-creation opportunities, collaboration, recognition and a creative marketplace to the consumers." One of the key early investors in Qyuki is Cisco, a company that has shaped the Internet and one that believes in the power of the internet in transforming how people connect, communicate and collaborate. The entire Qyuki platform is built on Cisco's cloud infrastructure.

Hilton Romanski, Vice President, Head of Corporate Business Development, Cisco said, "Cisco has a long track record of driving IT market growth through investments. We have invested in Qyuki to co-create a technology platform that enables conceptualization of creative content, contextualising it and delivering it through mobile devices and cloud. With Cisco, Qyuki has the capability to build an online human network in India." Qyuki will enable brands to leverage the creative community in many different ways. It will allow brands to reach out to a targeted community, interacting with content and co-create brand communication with them, directly or through online and mobile advertising. It also provides them with a chance to gauge the emotional pulse of the consumer or associate with specific genre of creativity.