Formally founded in 2015, the roots of one of Delhi’s renowned Production House and Studio company- Cellar Door, go back to the college days of its Co-founders, Rishav Rastogi and Sourav Bangotra, who along with a couple other Engineering students began producing feature and short films alongside theater in college under the same name.
Speaking exclusively to Marketing Mind, Cellar Door’s Co-founder and Director, Rastogi, emphasised that what made the nomenclature tick even years later, apart from the fact that the author of Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, called it English’s ‘most beautiful word’ as it is ‘phonetically pleasing’ even to the ones who don’t know the language, was that the duo- Bangotra and himself, had reunited to produce another feature film and fallen in love with filmmaking all over again, only to not leave it, this time.
“One day, one of my friends from HealthKart, who knew that me, Sourav and our other college friends, made films back in the day, called me and asked if we’d be interested in producing an ad for them and we agreed, not just because we had the equipment to do it but because we liked doing it. And even though we were paid very little, we were happy to do it. And once we made our first ad, we thought of making a business out of it, leading up to the formalisation of Cellar Door,” he mentioned.
With this he also pointed out that at the time of its formalised launch, i.e- in 2015, Cellar Door was all about producing TVCs, digital ads and corporate and commercial content. But with time, it grew to become both an agency as well as a production house who worked with other agencies such as MRM and Lowe Lintas, and also offered in-house writing capabilities for smaller to medium-scale clients.
“Previously, we followed the ‘one-stop-shop’ concept and aimed to provide our clients with all the services they require ranging from writing scripts to conceptualising and producing campaigns for them, but today, we have produced more than 500 commercials, out of which around 200 were for TV. And among these 200 commercials, while there were many small ads, we also produced around 40-50 campaigns for TV,” he said.
In the initial days, Rastogi stated that Cellar Doors worked with many startups including female-centric ones such as Pee Buddy, Sirona, etc. and was one of the youngest ones to win at the ABBY Awards 2016.
But hitting the break-even point in just two years of being in business, and being profitable for many years now, what started as a production house and agency soon made its foray into the studio landscape with the launch of Studio One in 2019 in Delhi.
Elaborating on Cellar Door’s proposition of being a company that is made ‘By Ad Filmmakers, For Ad Filmmakers’, he mentioned that since a lot of the production work earlier required one to rent a bare space and setting up a temporary green cloth and lights for a chroma-like setup repetitively, the production company decided to launch its own pre-built chroma studio that it could use for its own shoots and rent to other production houses when not in use, hence solving the time-consuming hassle.
“When we launched Studio One, it was a chroma studio designed for green screen shoots, which were a significant portion of our work and therefore we put a lot of thought into creating it and ensuring that it had everything a production team would need, including a soundproofed area, professional bi-colour lights, and a grid for additional lighting along with a green room equipped with clothes rack, steamer, and free internet and electricity to make it as plug-and-play as possible, so people could come and shoot without having to set up anything themselves,” he said.
Moreover, because they wanted to make the studio more accessible to production audiences, they also created packages starting at one hour instead of the traditional 12-hour shift, helping people saved their money.
“We built the studio with the production house in mind, as we are also a production house, and this helped people appreciate the attention to detail we put into it. And witnessing the success of Studio One, we continued to expand our studio offerings with the launch of Studio Two in October 2022, increasing our scale and capabilities in the same direction,” he emphasised.
Delving further into the functionality and the reason behind launching Studio Two, Rastogi stated that since Cellar Door started to track ads and make a list of what commonalities they had from a studio need standpoint, the idea behind launching the same was to remove redundancy in production by creating customizable sets with the mindset of a director, producer, production designer and DOP.
“When we began tracking ads, we saw that a huge proportion of ads were being shot at home- in a living room, bedroom or kitchen, so we thought that since we ourselves were always going to farmhouses and making changes in the furnishing and decor and spending money to make them look appropriate for our shoots, why not make a studio which is both neutral and customizable. Once we did that, people started liking it and shoots began to take place at Studio Two, and that too at a pace that it soon became possibly the most popular studio in the region,” he said.
However, Studio Two which was spread over a 3000 square feet land in Delhi also had its own limitations as it was not suitable for large-scale shoots and many other players had also begun setting up similar looking studios in the capital.
Keeping pace with all these discrepancies and identifying areas for growth, Cellar Door launched Studio Three, which is five times larger and has two floors to cater to various types of shoots- one floor dedicated to cars and photoshoots and the other for categories like home decor and lifestyle amongst others, some time back.
Commenting on the target audience and equipment at Studio Three, Rastogi said that their target clientele encompasses producers, line producers, and industry professionals seeking efficient and cost-effective solutions for their shoots.
While talking about the equipment, he mentioned that Studio Three, Floor B boasts the ‘largest’ cyclorama in the region, complete with RGB lights and a built-in turntable, embodying the company’s philosophy of making the space as plug-and-play as possible. It also integrated features like the turntable directly into the studio floor and the pre-installed lights allows for seamless background customization, catering to the diverse needs of photographers and ensuring hassle-free shoots.
Since its launch in March 2024, Studio Three, as per Rastogi has witnessed industry giants like Amazon utilising it for their shoots, and now the company aims to collaborate with the likes of Pepperfry, Urban Ladder, Myntra and more.
While talking about Studio Three’s success, he mentioned, “Normally, we keep a warm-up period of two to three months, but the first month has been quite busy. We have received over 15 bookings for the first month, which is great. So far, everyone who has visited the place has approved of it. They either changed their scripts or changed their schedules to be able to shoot here.”
Upon being questioned as to what made Cellar Door expand its offerings in Delhi rather than going to other markets such as the advertising capital of India- Mumbai, or even Bangalore as a matter of fact, he replied, “When we started in Delhi NCR, many people asked us why we didn’t go to Mumbai as it has been the hub of the advertising industry for many years now. Since then, to now, we have truly believed that Delhi has enough potential to flourish in the film and advertising production scene and therefore we launched our venture here.”
“Additionally, we also wanted to establish ourselves as the founding people of the Delhi film and ad production industry and create enough opportunities and infrastructure for people to stay and work in Delhi, rather than having to move to Mumbai for work,” he said.
Furthermore, he also mentioned that while Mumbai has its own advantages with its established infrastructure and ecosystem, Delhi has its own fair share of benefits such as more space, better weather, better roads, less saturation, etc. providing a room for growth and development.
Commenting on what occupies the larger portion of the revenue pie in Cellar Door’s financials- Studio or Production, he mentioned that even though Studio Two turned out to be quite successful and Studio Three has just launched a couple months back, it is the production work which makes far more revenue than the studio biz and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
However, he also pointed out that the margins that come with Studios are far better as compared to production business as the same have gone down drastically for the latter in times like today with brands and marketers blaming it on economic uncertainties like recessions.
The other challenge which, in his opinion, is impacting the production landscape today is the fact that many ad agencies have already or are in the process of setting up their own production houses.
“I don’t find anything wrong with it, it’s just a challenge for production houses. It’s like criticising AI!’ he chuffed.
Stating the rationale behind why he finds this to be a major challenge, he mentioned that even though there’s nothing one can do about it, he indeed feels that it is unfair because what’ll happen in this case is that when the advertising agencies will have a bias towards their own production houses or will be biased when presenting other production houses to the clients because they’ll already know about the client’s budgets.
“I have seen it happen that many times the agencies, despite knowing the client’s budgets, don’t tell the production house about it, leading us to end up over quoting and losing the project merely because of a higher quote. But no matter how unfair this is, we will have to live with it as there is no solution to it rather than clients and brand managers taking the onus of asking for full transparency by requesting direct quotes from all the production houses whilst communicating directly so that the brand doesn’t end up losing money or good work,” he said.
Concludingly, he also stated that since the vision behind launching Cellar Door in the first place was to set up and grow the filmmaking ecosystem in Delhi and be at the forefront of the same, it feels really good to see production houses from Bombay coming to Cellar Door Studios for shooting rather than the other way around.
