Singapore-based tech company Animeta has signed digital creators Shitty Ideas Trending to its Starmaker program.
Animeta focuses on creating and nurturing digital creators by helping them grow their communities and maximise their earnings across multiple social media platforms. It helps them customise brand solutions through its AI-based self-service creator tech platform. Shitty Ideas Trending (SIT) is a YouTube channel – with Instagram and Facebook pages as well – with various web-series and sketches in the relationship-based comedy space.
Animeta’s Starmaker program – of which SIT is now a part – brings together a suite of business solutions paired with the company’s proprietary tech-AI enabled tools that aid content strategy, to unleash bespoke creative-content, and monetisation linked opportunities. Animeta CEO Devdatta Potnis said, “Starmaker is a first of its kind program that aims to help creators derive the maximum value out of their overall creative output. It starts with helping them build their content strategy and the actual creative ideation, in a more intuitive and data informed way. Some of the AI-tech enabled solutions that we are building in-house, are designed to spark fresh creativity, while the creators also get access to a dedicated team that provides regular publishing and content optimisation support.”
Long before seeking trends to make videos on social media was a thing, Mohit Hussein and Chhavi Mittal – the founders of SIT – identified the power of providing relatable entertainment and connecting with a digital community of viewers. The husband-wife duo left their well-established careers in TV to start their own content brand. Today, with over eight million loyal followers and close to 4 billion views, SIT has established itself as a popular social video brand. It is well-known for its one-liners and quips, and some loved characters played by well-known actors from the TV industry.
Hussein, who both writes and directs all the videos, said, “I am at core a storyteller and an ideas person, who has grown over time, a reasonably strong understanding of what resonates well with our audience. There is so much more that we as SIT would love to create for them, in the form of more stories, new characters, exploring different formats and platforms. But often managing the business and operational side of things takes up a lot of our core team’s bandwidth. This is exactly where we found Animeta’s Starmaker offering to be a perfect fit, bringing the right complementary strengths.”
Commenting on the association with SIT, Potnis shared, “Onboarding SIT is indeed a big moment for the team. Chhavi and Mohit are true pioneers in the digital entertainment landscape of India, and an inspiration for many others. Our collaboration signifies a powerful synergy between two forces driving the evolution of digital entertainment, and we are excited about the limitless possibilities we are ready to explore.”
Animeta has introduced a new licensing approach in the Indian creator ecosystem, that enables them to grow creator revenue through syndication as well, across digital and linear mediums, and in some cases, by localising a creator’s content for a new audience. There are plans of launching SIT content in several new languages – Telugu, Tamil and Bahasa to begin with. Mittal, who acts often in SIT’s videos, said, “The cast will surely have some good laughs listening to our voices dubbed in different languages. On a more serious note, the best part of social media for us, is the community we are able to build through our content. The prospect of connecting with whole new language-based audiences, is surely going to be a wonderful experience that I am greatly looking forward to!”
Animeta branded content and IPs head Biswamitra Ray stated, “Brands are always on the lookout for content partners who have a deep connect with their audience and can drive endorsement in a seamless and entertaining way. SIT’s creative storylines and a well-defined character universe, present a strong potential for impactful brand integrations, as well as building dedicated series-based IPs.”
Animeta was founded by Anish Mehta, the former CEO of Asian animation studio Cosmos-Maya. Animeta’s CEO Potnis too comes from Cosmos-Maya, where he was the chief growth officer.
