Short-form videos of less than 5 minutes, like YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok, are today very popular across age groups, especially youngsters. Celebrities vie with each other to get more eyeballs on these platforms. Helping them to become more popular in the short form is the Chennai-based TrendLoud, a 9-year-old digital media company. Whether it is cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin, public speaker on Sanatana Dharma Dushyanth Sridhar, rapper ADK or singer Sivangi Krishnakumar, TrendLoud makes sure that their voices reach the right audience and in large numbers.

Since its inception, TrendLoud Digital India has established itself as the frontrunner in the South Indian digital space, with over 700+ YouTube channels under its network and about 9 billion views across channels, said R Raja, Managing Director. “We offer diversified services in both short—and long-format content creation and OTT production,” he told businessline.

On returning from the US after graduating there on film making, Raja said that YouTube was booming nine years ago, and he used the platform to collaborate with content creators and artists. “We took care of the execution and promotions. One of the first such projects was MadrasMeter, which has nearly 3.5 lakh subscribers, and is popular even now,” he said.

In the last couple of years, short-form videos have become popular, and the company has helped celebrities promote their hidden talents. For example, someone could be a great actor, but their hidden talent could be surfing. TrendLoud will give them a content plan for establishing themselves as surfers. “We work with cricketer R Ashwin, who loves to talk about cricket, and his show is one of the most popular,” he said.

“We have around 125 plus celebrities and a large number of individual creators. We have around 15 channels that’s completely funded by us,” said Raja. “Some actors want to promote their cooking or singing skills, and we help them,” he added.

The channels are available in all categories, including health, lifestyle, medicine, sports, music, movies, and technology. These days, the health channels are doing very well. Currently, the focus is predominantly Tamil and to some extent, Telegu and Kannada, he said.

Raja said the company was the first to do a South Indian web series—As I’m Suffering From Kadhal—in Tamil in 2017. Directed by Balaji Motion, it did phenomenally well. Since then, the company has produced over 20 web series and a couple of films for OTT platforms. Four more are in the pipeline, he said.

The company’s music label, TrendMusic, has worked on movies like Dharmadurai, which features Vijay Sethupathi and Tamannaah. Aigiri Nandini’s song from Solo, which features Dulquer Salmaan and Bejoy Nambiar, was also quite popular.

Moving to the next level, Raja said he wants to get into premium content shows on YouTube, expand to Kerala and Mumbai, get into long-format series and produce movies.

“We are looking at raising ₹100 crore for the expansion and in talks with venture capital and private equity players,” he said.

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