Sajan Raj Kurup’s life story will surely inspire you

Founder and Creative Chairman of Creativeland Asia, Sajan Raj Kurup is one of the most discussed and elusive creative heads in the industry. With well over 200 employees and 14 years of experience, Creativeland Asia’s clientele comprises names like Mercedes, Kalpataru, Micromax, Cinthol, Dominos, and several brands from Godrej. 

Kurup’s dedication and uncompromising nature have brought the company many multinational and high-profile clients, but the agency wasn’t always on top of the world. His underdog story will surely be an inspiration to you. In March of 2007, Sajan Kurup started the company in his dining room with no more than 4 people. Their goal was simple, to provide brands with design solutions to build energetic and driven relationships with their customers.  

Humble beginnings it was for Kurup and his team, and the road had a tough trudge. Despite industry pressure and trends, Kurup has always stuck to his beliefs of creative design over everything else. Even avoiding labeling themselves as an ‘advertising’ agency and preferring to call themselves a ‘creative’ agency. This belief, Kurup says, has been there since his childhood. Growing up with his father who worked in the National Institute of Design (NID) Sajan Raj Kurup was exposed to a life of creativity and design from a very young age. The campus provided him with knowledge about aesthetics, design, and innovation. And although he never studied there, he says the NID campus played a huge part in helping him grow up in the way that he did. He also claims that while at NID he has attended more pre-diploma projects than the average design student. 

For Sajan Kurup, the entrepreneur bug had grown at a very early age, in an interview with UTV, Kurup tells a story about how he convinced a newspaper delivery boy to let him help deliver newspapers to earn enough money just to buy some samosas. In the same interview, he let us into his personal life. He also claims that he worked as a bartender at a friend’s place when he was just 16 years old. In his own words, Kurup has come from a “starry-eyed hot-blooded upstart creative enthusiast to a wide-eyed optimist”. From a creative enthusiast during his time at NID to a creative investor, launching and investing in several innovatively driven projects, Sajan Raj Kurup seems to be at top of his game for his entire life. He started his now multinational company as small as one can and built it brick by brick, his motivational non-compromising attitude and sheer will have allowed him to launch himself to be one of the most sought-after creative heads in the industry today.