Category Archives: Blog

GramLab: KRDS’ New Venture is here to Change Marketing on Instagram

In a world dominated by social media and selfies, #aesthetic images are in. Instagram, being a visuals-driven medium has established itself as the go-to platform for exploring new perspectives and inspire users to stimulate their imagination.

2017 proved to be a fruitful year for the platform after the massive success of Insta Stories. It has now claimed the throne for the most engaging platform with 68% of Instagrammers frequently interacting with brands.

Enter GramLab, a sub-agency of KRDS that will specialize in crafting brand & communication strategies specifically for Instagram. It is Asia’s first agency that will live, breathe and talk Instagram. The main focus of GramLab is visual storytelling in 6 seconds with a mobile-first approach to gain maximum user engagement. The agency’s strength includes its ability to stay on top of all Instagram trends and produce content that will set the brand apart from its competitors. GramLab will also have its own in-house studio to ensure originality of content which will be #instaworthy.

GramLab has identified that Instagram is a relatively young platform; driven by user generated content and hence it will be a great playground for brands to evolve in a user-centric manner. It also maintains that mirroring content from Facebook onto Instagram is not be a viable strategy, as user engagement on either platforms is different. The agency will support the brands right from the concept to execution and technical support. With this launch,GramLab aims to establish a stronghold in Instagram marketing.

The agency has already produced successful Instagram campaigns for local and global brands like Pandora, Meiji, Shilla Duty Free Singapore, Wildlife Reserve Singapore, Marks & Spencer and ION Orchard.

Commenting on the launch, Preetham Venkky, Director at KRDS Asia said,

Instagram has become one of the widely used social media platforms for showcasing relatable and aspirational content through pleasing visuals. Brands are starting to realise the potential of the platform and are actively joining the Instagram bandwagon. With the introduction of Insta Stories, there is more scope for brands to experiment with their content and reach out to potential consumers. There also arises a need for brands to constantly stay on top of trends to differentiate themselves from their competitors and we are here to help them. We’re excited to work with more brands to help grow their presence on Instagram.

Click here to learn more about GramLab and the world of Instagram marketing.

KRDS ENABLES PRODUCT SAMPLING FOR MARGO THROUGH A ‘NEEMOLOGY’ QUIZ APP

Margo is an Ayurvedic soap brand launched in 1920. Originally seen as a medicinal soap, because of its curing capabilities, the brand wanted to revive itself and establish its presence amongst the younger audiences as an Ayurvedic-Beauty soap.

KRDS decided to map the benefits of Margo against the offerings of its King ingredient, Neem. We gamified the experience on an app called ‘Neemology – by Margo’, wherein Users were prompted to take the quiz, as well as challenge their friends to find out if they are experts at Neemology.

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All that the users were required to do was to answer 5 questions about neem and its benefits for the skin.

At the successful completion of the quiz, users were given an option to leave their details in case they would like to try the new Margo for themselves.

The activity reached out to more than 7 lakh people, resulted in 25500+ users spending an average of 3 mins on the quiz, and 15,000 form fills.

The soap was sent to 12,000 people, hence, catering the samples to a very involved, interested set of audience.

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KRDS Middle East continues their winning streak for Social Media Management for MIE Events with 6 successful events in 2017!

The Social Media and Digital Agency has supported MIE Events by providing content for their Facebook and Twitter pages since April 2016.

MIE Group is a professional Exhibition, Trading and consulting organization. Under the background of “One Belt, One road”, MIE has already successfully held several high quality Chinese goods exhibitions in the countries along the route, together with China sourcing workshop and cultural exchange activity, successfully building up the brand “China Trade Week”.

KRDS has managed Social Media Marketing for China Trade Week in Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, UAE and Morocco.

Michelle Meyrick, International Event Director for MIE Event, says, “KRDS has had a big contribution towards the success of our event marketing spanning across the Middle East and Africa. From the very first meeting the team has been highly professional and easy to work with. The social media engagement in all 5 countries in 2017 had surpassed our expectations and their post creativity has taken the burden off us. We hope to continue working with them for many years to come.”

The content for these pages was created to focus on Chinese culture and the relationship between China and the host country. The idea was to generate an interest from the users and to create interactive content in the form of Gifs and Illustrations.

The agency also provides real time coverage of the event.

About KRDS MIDDLE EAST:

KRDS Middle East is a part of the KRDS Group, a network founded in 2008 in Paris with a headcount of over 150 employees at present and over eight offices across Europe and Asia (France, Singapore, India, China, Hong Kong and Dubai)

With a strong Social Media DNA, KRDS has grown to a full stack digital agency, with strong expertise in Dynamic Content, Mobile first approach & Customer service experience.

At the 2013 “Facebook Innovation Competition”, KRDS Group was the only non-American contestant to have won among the 260 agencies. KRDS Group has handled over 2000 social campaigns across 30 countries for some of the world’s most prestigious brands, such as DBS, AIA, Peugeot, Danone, Microsoft, LVMH, Unilever, Veuve Clicquot, Nestlé, Tag Heuer, Air France and L’Oréal.

In the Middle East, the agency has provided digital solutions for brands like Majid Al Futtaim, Ooredoo, Nespresso, Nissan, Ministry of tourism, Oman, Osram Automitive Lighting, and Renault Trucks.
KRDS Group counts Ardian (ex Axa Private Equity) as an investor and is part of R3 Social 40 – an initiative from global consulting firm, R3, to showcase forty of the world’s best Social Media agencies across globe.

PRESS CONTACT:

Name : Leonard Guillermin
Role : General Manager, KRDS MENA
Phone no. : 055-847-1264
KRDS email : [email protected]

KRDS MIDDLE EAST BAGS SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT FOR RENAULT TRUCKS MIDDLE EAST

The Social Media and Digital Agency has extended its services to Renault Trucks for Middle East in December 2017. The objective of this partnership is to create a digital presence for the brand on leading Social Media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.

So far, KRDS has created a Facebook page and a LinkedIn page, which reflects the brands ideology of Innovation, Robustness, and Customer Intimacy.

Farida Timsiet, Marketing & Communication Manager for Renault Trucks Middle East says, “We started working with KRDS a couple months ago; after a brief meeting they quickly understood our needs and presented the strategy for our facebook page. Our Community Manager is very hands-on and dedicated for our page; she takes initiatives and makes a lot of suggestions for the page; which is exactly what we needed.”

The main objective is to reach out the existing fan base of Renault Trucks and carve out a niche audience, interested in automotive innovations. With majority of content consumers moving to the digital landscape, KRDS hopes to provide an outlet, which bridges the gap between the brand, and its patrons.

So far, the digital agency has created a mélange of animated and static content that focuses on the brand’s identity and yet makes it accessible through digital friendly content.

Keeping in mind the various scopes of interest for the consumers, the agency has focused it’s content on Brand Identity, heritage of Renault Trucks, and Behind the scenes snippets and more.

About KRDS MIDDLE EAST:

KRDS Middle East is a part of the KRDS Group, a network founded in 2008 in Paris with a headcount of over 150 employees at present and over eight offices across Europe and Asia (France, Singapore, India, China, Hong Kong and Dubai)

With a strong Social Media DNA, KRDS has grown to a full stack digital agency, with strong expertise in Dynamic Content, Mobile first approach & Customer service experience.

At the 2013 “Facebook Innovation Competition”, KRDS Group was the only non-American contestant to have won among the 260 agencies. KRDS Group has handled over 2000 social campaigns across 30 countries for some of the world’s most prestigious brands, such as DBS, AIA, Peugeot, Danone, Microsoft, LVMH, Unilever, Veuve Clicquot, Nestlé, Tag Heuer, Air France and L’Oréal.

In the Middle East, the agency has provided digital solutions for brands like Majid Al Futtaim, Ooredoo, Nespresso, Nissan, Ministry of tourism, Oman, Osram Automitive Lighting and MIE Events.
KRDS Group counts Ardian (ex Axa Private Equity) as an investor and is part of R3 Social 40 – an initiative from global consulting firm, R3, to showcase forty of the world’s best Social Media agencies across globe.

PRESS CONTACT:

Name : Leonard Guillermin
Role : General Manager, KRDS MENA
Phone no. : 055-847-1264
KRDS email : [email protected]

KRDS Singapore was adjudged Mobile Agency of the Year as well as Specialist Agency of the Year

When we started KRDS Singapore towards the end of 2012, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The odds in the small city state have always been stacked against the new entrant. Infant mortality rate of most independent agencies is a mere 2 years. More than 75% of the independent agencies we considered competition have all evaporated. That’s what a micro-economic market can do to a newcomer.

We were willing to take the risk though, because we knew we had a rare attribute – Rapid Iteration. ‘Never giving up’ came easy to us, but iterating every aspect of the agency swiftly and steadfastly wasn’t an easy task. It meant sleepless nights, stressful close calls and hard risky decisions.

Thankfully, the effort paid off. Week before last, KRDS Singapore was adjudged Mobile Agency of the Year as well as Specialist Agency of the Year by a panel of senior client-side marketers assembled by Marketing Magazine (this year the panel included marketing leaders from brands such as Swarovski, Grab, Johnson & Johnson, HSBC, Levi Strauss & Co and more.

This exceptional honour has truly humbled us.

We were able to get here, thanks to the most amazing team. Period.

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More than anything, this award is the dedication of each and every member of KRDS in the last 4 years. Thank you for the crazy after hours. Thank you for the madness. Thank you for the challenges. Thank you for persevering. Thank you for making a mark.

Honestly though, none of this would’ve been possible without our true partners in crime, our clients. We love that you challenge us. We are glad you allow us to make an ever lasting mark. We are grateful you are there with us every step of the way.

Thank you.

Preetham Venkky, Director @ KRDS Singapore

Baahubali 2 Launches a #ChatQuizChallenge – A Trivia cum Subscription Chatbot To Promote the Movie on Facebook

Ahead of the highly anticipated release of Baahubali : The Conclusion, the makers wanted to
promote the launch with an interactive Chatbot quiz to give fans a quick recap of the movie.
Social & Digital Agency KRDS India was roped in to develop an interactive Chatbot on the page to
promote the movie. The move comes after KRDS India developed a series of movie promotion
Chatbots, recently for Kaabil, M.S Dhoni, Jolly LLB 2 and Badrinath ki Dulhaniya.
The Chatbot was launched on Baahubali’s official facebook page after the trailer was launched on
15th March 2017. The idea was to engage  the Users and get them to guess on the stotyline of
Baahubali 2 from whatever they could gather on the Trailer of the movie.

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Users can message the page to play the #ChatQuizChallenge that had 5 trivia questions from the
Trailer. The BOT is a multi-lingual BOT and is in five languages – English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and
Malayalam.

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Commenting on the Chatbot, Senthil Anand – General Manager at KRDS India Agency said:
“With the huge success of Baahubali – The Beginning, fans of the movie, across India have been eagerly awaiting the sequel and for this reason the #ChatQuizChallenge was launched to fuel the anxiety created by the trailer and to get users to subscribe and get new updates from the production crew
We’ve already seen good reception to the BOT on all languages and hope to hit a milestone with the number of subscriptions to the Chatbot soon”

At the end of the quiz users can receive a customized Baahubali 2 artwork with their profile picture to show their support for the franchise.
The user could also subscribe to the Chatbot to get exclusive updates from the production crew of the movie.
The Chatbot can be accessed by messaging the page [https://www.facebook.com/BaahubaliMovie/] or on Messenger [https://www.messenger.com/t/BaahubaliMovie ]

KRDS Singapore & Volkswagen Launch an Innovative Campaign

To promote the Volkswagen Caddy, Volkswagen Singapore roped in Social & Mobile Agency KRDS Singapore to launch an innovative campaign involving 4 phases for customers to know more about the Caddy and everything it can do.

The campaign began with asking users to share their ideas on how the Caddy can be transformed and 10 best comments saw their idea come into life.

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Later interesting facts and features of the new Caddy was posted online including suggestions from fans on which colours they preferred and an innovative Facebook Live video was broadcasted on the page.

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The campaign was a success with the Caddy being seen online over 2.5 million times.

Click here to check out the entire campaign and results on Youtube. 

Visit our slideshare presentation for more insight on the campaign.

KRDS Launches a Comical Bot for CommitStrip – The Web Comic Loved by Coders

What started as a side project for one of the cofounders of KRDS, a leading Digital Marketing Agency, has now turned into a popular web comic among developers, for its spot-on observations of life as a coder.

CommitStrip is a web comic strip on the daily experiences and struggles as a full time developer.  CommitStrip is the kind of thing developers would like to read between two cups of coffee. CommitStrip got off the ground in 2012 and now boasts a global readership of over 500,000 visitors per month . The most viral post, Terminal Forever was seen over 1 million times and shared 30,000 times across all social media.

As more users turned to the website, there was a possibility that finding a particular comic strip around a topic would pose a challenge. Thus, KRDS developed a Chatbot for CommitStrip readers on Facebook to let them look for a particular comic strip simply by answering some questions and interacting with the Bot.

The central idea was to provide a mobile-friendly and frictionless access to the database of close to 1,000 strips created to this day. That’s why the chatbot was done on Facebook Messenger, an app that most readers would have on their phone.

KRDS considered that marrying comic strips – a great and underrated way to tell stories in the mobile era, to a Messenger chatbot – the latest of today’s intuitive digital communication channels, was a winning combination for users.

The chatbot can be accessed at m.me/wearecoders (or on CommitStrip’s Facebook account by messaging the page).  The Chatbot can be used to view the 5 latest posts, the best comic of the month and also enables users to search for a comic based on keywords.

The popularity of KRDS’ CommitStrip transcends into all media, so much so that when a Kickstarter campaign was launched to turn the comic strips into a book – within a month, the goal was reached and over 5,000 books were published and shipped to its avid readers.

CommitStrip aims to continue exploring the idea of bringing the experiences of techies across the world into life, on the web space.

ICICI Lombard’s ‘Caring Hands’ initiative receives a tremendous response on social media

The initiative leveraged the digital medium to create awareness and consequently trended at No. 1 on Twitter on the day of the event

ICICI Lombard, one of India’s largest general insurance company recently concluded its sixth edition of ‘Caring Hands’, an initiative that aims at providing preventive healthcare services to underprivileged children in India. Tapping into the power of digital media, the initiative, that provides a clear vision to India’s future generation, KRDS India helped execute this campaign using latest trends in social media marketing.

Every year, at the ‘Caring Hands’ event, employees of ICICI Lombard volunteer to set up camps at various schools across the country. The volunteers along with a team of ophthalmologists conduct eye-check ups for the underprivileged children and provide spectacles to those in need. Since its inception, ‘Caring Hands’ has reached out to over a lakh children in nearly 250 schools across India. To encapsulate the essence of the initiative, this year, the activity on social media was primarily executed in a video format. Series of videos chronicled the journey of the initiative and the overall impact it has had on the community. On the day of the event, i.e 9th December, the activity not only garnered eye balls via live-tweets, it also encouraged positive conversations around the cause, thereby trending at no. 1 on the day. Overall, on social media, the campaign reached out to 24.4 lakh people on Facebook, with 3.2 lakh + video views and over 2.17 lakh impressions on Twitter.

To kick-start the activity on digital, a teaser video was released around what is about to be launched shortly. The video giving a glimpse of the initiative reached out to over 3.8 Lakhs people on Facebook, garnering 101k views.

The teaser video was followed up by a pre-launch video, which gave audiences a further insight on the initiative and the impact it has created over the years. The pre-launch video reached over 7 lakh people, garnering 196K views.

On the day of the event, camps were set up across the country, where employees of the organisation volunteered to visit schools, conduct eye-check -ups for children and provide spectacles to those who needed it. The entire event was documented via live-tweets, receiving a great response from the audiences on Twitter. This led to conversations around the cause, leading to #ICICILombard_CaringHands trending at No. 1 spot on the day.

Simultaneously, on Facebook, the entire journey from the day was captured and compiled into an album that reached out to over 1.2 million people, engaging with over 78.5K audiences.

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Commenting on the success of the initiative, ICICI Lombard GIC, MD & CEO, Bhargav Dasgupta said, “It is our continuous endeavor to go beyond our business goals and contribute to the community at large. I am happy to see the perseverance and dedication of over 2500 colleagues at ICICI Lombard who have been participating regularly in this unique employee volunteering initiative for the last 6 years. In the process, they have helped screen more than 1.4 lakh underprivileged children for eye vision and provided free spectacles to more than 10,000 kids with poor vision.”
Achal Deoda, Business Head – India, KRDS India added, ‘The ICICI Lombard Caring Hands initiative by design has great participation from the brand and the employees alike, since its inception. We at KRDS India are very excited that we could further enable this brilliant initiative to be a part of national trend across social media platforms and further add to this great cause by bringing the brand and the audiences together ’.

The activity concluded with a post-launch video that comprised of the impact the initiative had this year along with bytes from children across centres and how ‘Caring Hands’ affected their lives.
The video garnered 25k views on Facebook and garnered 21k impressions on Twitter:

This year, the initiative reached out to 33,386 children across the country and provided spectacles to 4,802 children with a poor vision.
With ‘Caring Hands’, ICICI Lombard along with its employees that volunteer to strive to contribute to the betterment of the society, continue to embrace its commitment to communities across India.
To know more about this campaign, please write to : [email protected]

ABOUT KRDS:

KRDS India is a part of the KRDS Group, a network founded in 2008 in Paris with a headcount of over 150 employees at present and over eight offices across Europe and Asia (France, Singapore, India and China).

KRDS has a reputation for being one of the foremost Facebook Marketing Partners since 2010 and specializes in designing social media strategies, integrated applications and developing microsites. Community building and management along with social ads management is another forte for their specialization.

At the 2013 “Facebook Innovation Competition”, KRDS Group was the only non-American contestant to have won among the 260 agencies. KRDS Group has handled over 2000 social campaigns across 30 countries for some of the world’s most prestigious brands, such as DBS, AIA, Peugeot, Danone, Microsoft, LVMH, Unilever, Veuve Clicquot, Nestlé, Tag Heuer, Air France and L’Oréal. KRDS India presently handles campaigns for brands like Bata India, SBI Cards, ICICI Lombard, Adiya Birla – More Retail and Lifecell International.

KRDS Group counts Ardian (ex Axa Private Equity) as an investor and is part of R3 Social 40 – an initiative from global consulting firm, R3, to showcase forty of the world’s best Social Media agencies across globe.

About ICICI Lombard General Insurance

ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd. is a joint venture between ICICI Bank Limited and Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, a Canada-based diversified financial services company engaged in general insurance, reinsurance, insurance claims management and investment management. ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd. is one of the leading private sector general insurance companies in India with a Gross Written Premium (GWP) of Rs 83.07 billion for the year ended March 31, 2016. The company issued over 15.80 million policies and settled over 1.62 million claims as on March 31, 2016.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance has been declared the ‘Most Innovative Health Insurance Company of the Year’ at ‘The 2016 Frost & Sullivan India Best Practices Awards’. It has also been conferred with the Association for Talent Development (ATD) Best Award 2016 for the fourth time. ICICI Lombard has won the ‘Claim Service Leader’ (General Insurance – Large category) and ‘Technology Innovation’ Awards at the Indian Insurance Awards, 2016. The company received the ‘Claim Service Leader’ award for its excellent track record in claim settlement across product segments. It was given the ‘Technology Innovation’ recognition for its technology driven initiatives especially the ‘RiskInspect’ App, a mobile application developed to capture risk information of low sum insured property risk. ICICI Lombard General Insurance has been adjudged the ‘Non-life Insurer of the Year’ at the coveted Outlook Money Awards, 2015. Non-life Insurance as a category has been included for the first time at the Outlook Money awards, which were introduced more than a decade ago. It is a matter of pride that ICICI Lombard has been chosen as the Winner in the introductory year of the award category.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance has been conferred the coveted ‘Golden Peacock Corporate Social Responsibility Award 2015’. The award recognizes the company for it continuous contribution to CSR and especially for its ‘Caring Hands’ initiative, an employee volunteering CSR program. ICICI Lombard was adjudged the award ‘Golden Peacock Innovation Management Award, 2015’ for demonstrating innovation across multiple functions of its business operations and promoting the ‘culture of innovation’. The award ‘Golden Peacock Award for Business Excellence, 2015’ recognizes best management practices that act as the basis for business excellence.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance received the award for its robust risk management practices and customer centric initiatives. ICICI Lombard was conferred with the ‘E-Business Leader’ Award in the General Insurance Category at the 5th annual edition of the Indian Insurance Award 2015 for its performance, growth, product and market innovation, customer service and technology. ICICI Lombard was also named as the ‘Best Travel Insurance Company’ by CNBC Awaaz Travel Awards 2015 presented by the Chattisgarh Government based on an online and on-air survey.

Event: KRDS Studio in Chennai has hosted our first Behance Portfolio Review Meet

KRDS has always encouraged young professionals and provided them with the right platform to exhibit their expertise. We often come together to initiate various interesting events with a motive to bring together creative professionals from all fields. Our most recent success was organizing the ‘Portfolio Review Week’ for Behance, that saw young minds come and participate from different parts of the country. The ‘Portfolio Review Week’ is a volunteer organized event that is conducted twice annually and has been previously hosted at various International venues.We were enthusiastic at the opportunity to bring creative minds under one roof to appreciate, analyse and acknowledge artistic caliber.

The five hour session was attended by 50 candidates and 4 jury members who were invited to judge the best work from the group. Designs were evaluated based on their proficiency and winners were chosen for each category as follow :

Arvind Kumar for the best Visual Designs
Ravi Ganesh Vijayakumar for the best Illustrations
Krishna Kumar for the best Motion Graphics

The event has been extensively covered on social media and we had more than 5,000 people following our Facebook live.

The Behance Portfolio review meet saw talents come in from various parts of the country and share among themselves the love for art. The Halloween themed set-up helped create an artistic atmosphere for the event and grabbed everyone’s attention. Our sincere thanks to everyone who helped host the review meet and to the jury who helped us immensely.

A big thank you as well to our Jury members for their participation and precious recommendations:

Nithin K Surendran – Digital Art Director & Head of studio at KRDS India
Apeksha Sharma – Freelance Art Director and former Senior Art Director at Ogilvy & Mather India
Jose Fernando – Digital Art Director at Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications (an Accenture company)
Monisha Miriam Ravikumar – Freelance Game Designer & Concept Artist at GSN Games

We are definitely looking forward to welcoming our next Behance Portfolio Review Meet-up.

Here are some pictures from Behance Portfolio Review Meet held at KRDS- Chennai on Oct 24th 2016.

Getting started for the event in the Traditional way with Diya.

The Head of Creatives at KRDS giving a cheerful welcome speech to all the participants at the event.
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Nithin K Surendran, Digital Art Director & Head of studio at KRDS India, jury member, open the meeting with his speech.
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The Jury members & the participants paying attention to the presentation done by host.
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Open portfolio review sessions with the Jury.
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Candidates looking over the works of fellow designers.
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Participants appreciating the works of fellow creative people.
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The winner for Visual Designs: Arvind Kumar
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The winner for best works on Illustrations : Ravi Ganesh Vijayakumar
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Best work for Motion graphics : Krishna Kumar
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And here is the whole group posing for a picture.
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Last but not the least, the whole Design-Studio team from KRDS who made this happen with their immense passion towards discovering new talents & making this event a success.
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