HYDERABAD : If you’ve spotted a young Indian wearing a T-shirt which screams “Na saav nen sasta” or “Boss-Chiru” or “Darling-Prabhas,” at JF Kennedy Airport, it’s perhaps from Hyderabad, from a startup called Mad Monkey that takes pride in being Telugu and wearing Telugu.
"While I, the creative graphic designer, am from Sangareddy, co-founder Varsha Goliala is from Hyderabad. We bonded over our common love for Telugu and movies and we want to reach out to every Telugu person globally and make them feel proud wearing the first Telugu brand," says Avinash Golla, the founder of madmonkeystore.com, touted to be the first Telugu/cinema-based merchandise start-up.
The six-member team comprising Varsha and him, Akhilesh, Kedar Prasad, Sai Kiran, Naresh are all local youth, in their 20s who work out of their Banjara Hills office in the city. The brand uses globally appealing designs using Telugu Typography and movie based quotes. “Although we haven’t partnered with any movies yet, our fare is for all Telugu and movie lovers.
We design T-shirts with Telugu literature on them too. “We want to reach out to every Telugu speaking and movie-loving people globally and make them feel proud wearing the first Telugu brand. They also aspire to encourage the entire Telugu speaking crowd to wear and talk Telugu with pride and not be ashamed of their native language.”
Talking about how it all began, Avinash, the graphic designer says, “I had worked in Chennai for a couple of years after my graduation. I noticed that Tamilians and Malayalis flaunt their nativity and language wherever they are. This made me appreciate Telugu) and the significance of this language it held for ages.
As I am a creative designer and of course, a movie buff, the First-Day-First-Show kind of movie buff, I felt bad when I saw fans putting badly and unprofessionally printed movie posters on their T-shirts to show their love for the movie or star, I felt I need to fill this gap. I got inspired by a Tamil film merchandise brand called Fully Filmy and wanted to try out the same for Telugu.”
“In 2018, Varsha, a computer science graduate, partnered with me and played a significant role in Mad Monkey. We have a diverse team. While Kedar Prasad takes care of digital marketing, Akhilesh and Sai Kiran are our social media content creators and Naresh handles the offline marketing. Their products are priced from Rs 399 to Rs 899. The plan for 2020 is to go beyond selling their own e-commerce portal and be present in lifestyle stores,” Avinash shares.
The writer can be contacted at kalanidhi@newindianexpress.com
Twitter: @mkalanidhi