It’s a long story about the downs and ups of our journey.
Be warned, but if you make it till the end you will remember the name.
What does the word Slarity mean?
It sounds like clarity with an S. And what does it stand for?
Is it something like super? or simple?
Ok, let me tell you a story, how the name Slarity came into existence.
A long time ago, 2 brothers me Arun was in his college and Anish was in his school I was 10 years older than Anish at that time, well I am still 10 years older now, but at the time he wanted to do everything I wanted to do and do it better. There are different accounts of what actually happened and how it all started, but since my brother is not writing this narrative, let me tell you the true story.
I wanted to start a creative technology agency. At that time it was nothing but a fancy imagination of a college kid.
The first name was not Slarity, it was actually Antares, named after a star also called Alpha Scorpii, red, one of the largest known stars, having several hundred times the diameter of the Sun and 10,000 times the Sun’s luminosity.
All fancy and cool, but the problem was the name is not something you can own, we didn’t have the .com. We found it the hard way it was really difficult to make people remember it. Because it was so uncommon. It was a struggle. But at this time it was mostly me in my college, making some side hustle by doing all my friend’s college assignment projects and making some good money for a college kid. But the best part was, I, Arun was having fun.
At this time I got acquainted with Jay, who is an exceptional designer who has created some of the best brands and works with some of the biggest and most respected organizations in India and worldwide. And I or Arun was called for a gig to work with him for one of the animations for one of the biggest names in the industry.
Ok, what does this have to do with the name Slarity?
Does the S stand for storytelling?
But bear with me, we can’t tell this story without Jay, because before that I wanted to get into the movies like every kid, peer I was growing up with.
But Jay showed a different perspective. That design, technology, and storytelling could be used for business as well and that’s exactly how you create brands. It’s the vision, a script an idea a narrative, and just imagination and how you can innovate it and how you bring it into reality is what matters.
If you look at it everything around you was once just an idea, someone’s imagination and then it becomes innovation and real.
So far a college kid, to suddenly to make 30X what he used to charge his peers for a day’s work because it was not easy and at that time the visual effects and animation skills were a rare commodity especially with good design and a good screenplay and storytelling. Good design is not just how it looks like and feels like, good design is how it works, together as a cohesive unit. And that happened to work with a design genius like Jay.
And that my friends is one of the best feelings you get to experience, to create work that you love because the only way to do great work is to love what you do if it was for the money everyone will do it. It’s never about the money that’s a byproduct, it’s the dopamine rush you get creating something of true value which will be timeless and tells a story, soon meant to be a relics of human expression. To create art that communicates a story to the world.
So this time Arun foolishly wanted to create a great agency, a supreme agency like never before. It all started with this simple idea, everything around you was once just someone’s imagination, and if someone can do it we can do it better and if no one can do it, then we must do it.
Arun loved science, maybe the S stands for science!?,
Before Slarity the name was Studio Singularity.
Actually, it was singularity which is the scientific word that describes the point before the big bang, there is something before the big bang? Yes, indeed we can observe this using the Hubble telescope. Everything is moving away from each other but if everything in the universe is moving away from each other at some point in time everything should have originated at the same point. And that my friends is called the Singularity. What a cool name. And what a cool story to it.
Everything you can see in the observable universe from light to dark the concept of big and small, the infinity in a tiny point. And bam that was the name we have been looking for, it’s better than Antares, and it’s bigger and smaller at the same time. And the best part is people find it easier to say and remember singularity, it has a ring to it. And the best part is the year 2045 is called the year of singularity. So we thought that could be free PR for us,
Studio singularity was born. I built my own website. At that time it was almost impossible or very expensive. But you know the mantra, imagine innovate. Boom a cool website was made and that was something not many design agencies at that point had. That gave us some unfair advantage. We will go around meet people and flaunt the website and that used to get us through the door most of the time. We were getting small gigs here and there, leveraging on the old work to build better ones with great people mostly entrepreneurs and business leaders, always learning trying to make the best work yet.
At this time I had a friend named Sam who was helping with the marketing part and I was the design guy by this time I had worked on a lot of great brands and create some too. But we needed to get strong with technology because at this time we were also exploring a business idea to create a service called Autogeto, it’s the same as Uber but that that point Uber was not in India and we predicted it will happen eventually, we also learned about this small startup called OLA working on it, trying to solve the finding the cab problem which was Uber for India. And we found for every cab there are 50 autos (the three-wheeled transportation found in India, also known as auto rickshaw, tuk-tuk), we asked the question why don’t we do this for autos instead. Why build a new infrastructure, when you can organize one of the largest public transport sectors which already exists.
We went around asking auto (Tuk-tuk) drivers if this would be useful and the feedback data looked promising and at this time we started to really learn about how to think like a startup and try and solve real-world problems. We created a video we had huge support from people and the community but we were not able to code an app of that complexity at that point in time, we needed help we approach other agencies organizations but it was a huge challenge for a bunch of young people trying to solve this huge problem. We even spend a lot of the money we earned designing, into trying to source developers, yes I did build the website but to develop an app is a whole new ball game. And of course like always, There were a lot of naysayers this will never work, how can people book cabs or even autos using a mobile phone it’s impossible, but I used to always say either we do it in 6 months or someone will do it. One year from that point OLA announced OLA auto. Then Uber entered the Indian market as well. I failed but we learned something of great value. And a drive to not just design and create beautiful stories, narratives, and ideas that inspire but also build great products, software and service yet to come.
This is where our biggest learning in business happened. Before that, we were thinking like a studio, like artists probably even scientists. But this time we started to understand how to build a business a community a vision.
And if you are wondering where is Slarity? We are almost there. Studio Singularity was cool we had great partnerships with some amazing people whom we loved working with. We constantly challenged ideas and sought criticism on a daily basis that’s how you refines gold, that’s the only way we can move forward. So we went back to serving the brands and business we were working with. And all this while there was this kid Anish who saw all this growing up, and he understood how important it was for us to transition into a technology-based agency. That’s something money can’t buy. It takes true passion and drive. And at age 17 he rebuilt the Studio Singulary’s website bigger and better. This again with all our new clients positioned us better. And before he completed his school he built a complete E-commerce website. And that my friend what the start of something bigger something Better.
We friends jokingly named him tech god as we had never seen anybody do the things he did, having tried and failed he made it look easy. And finally, we had the missing part, remembering I told you there is the thing that everything in the universe is moving away from each other, I lied. Come on you are on this planet Earth, there is gravity holding you as well. Yes, things are moving apart but also there is this great convergence that’s happening as well.
With all our learnings and all our failures and success, we started to understand and see the big picture. Like Singularity, there is a shift happening in the world, Everything is getting connected to everything else, the design is highly dependent on technology and vice-versa, and every field is getting interconnected with everything else, now more than ever every business needs creative and critical thinking, art and science, design & technology, Imagination & Innovation.
We transformed into a creative technology agency, now we use a lot of automation and artificial intelligence for our creative processes and use a lot of creative solutions for our technological endeavours. We have transcended into a new breed of modern agency which bridges the gap between humans and machines, now we are on a quest to explore and build our very own AGI – Artificial General Intelligence & that’s our vision for the future.
We have found our tribe of people, clients, collaborators and fellowship who inspire and constantly push us to do more.
Does the S in Slarity stand for Start? Even I wonder.
Thus Slarity was born.
Where the mind becomes matter,
Where dreams become reality,
Where the impossible becomes inevitable,
Hi, we are Slarity.
Slarity – It’s a coined name, it’s created like every other name ever existed. But the cool thing is it’s derived from singularity, it’s Short it’s sweeter, it’s simpler. And most importantly it’s unique which means free SEO type Slarity and we will be the one. And it was created after years of researching and understanding branding. It’s refined. Like how Coca-Cola become coke, Instagram became insta and how Facebook became FB this is how brands evolve. We just went ahead and discovered it. So be informed. The year 2045 will be the year of Slarity. And if you been with us so long and so far thank you so much. It means a lot.
We urge you now to try and forget the name. But after all this, we hope you will never forget Slarity. We took this opportunity to engage you and brand the name and leave a memory a story an idea in your heart and mind.
Imagine Innovate.