Today we’d like to introduce you to Bhargava Chiluveru.
Bhargava, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was born in Hyderabad, India. Moved to the United States in 1998 when I was 13. I was introduced to photography and photoshop at a very young age, which is unusual for someone during that time in India. While high school was about fitting in and mostly filled with bullies, college was surrounded with confusion and anger. I knew I wanted to pursue a creative career but my parents discouraged this at the time and I had no idea what I was doing with my time in college if my degree was going to mean anything. A few semesters before graduation, I had a major accident which resulted in two fractures in my skull and a lot of trauma. Although I made a very quick recovery, I was struggling mentally by the time I graduated from college.
I hard on myself most of the time which led me into a depression. I didn’t see much going for me for a long time in my life. Around six years ago, my girlfriend at the time (wife now) and I went through a pretty unique journey of becoming mentally and physically healthier and it led to a lot of major changes in our life. After we got married, we both decided to quit our jobs and do a lot of things we weren’t doing in the years before: focus a healthier lifestyle, travel, move to a dense, urban environment, and figure out how to make money using our skill sets. Anu and I experimented with a few different business models that allowed us to travel a lot. We ended up moving to Midtown and actually getting an office space on the Beltline which at the time was fairly new.
While trying to balance the business ventures, I decided to use Instagram as a platform to showcase my own personal art and connect with the creative community in the city. This became a very critical component to our success as more and more people recognized. To this day, more people identify me as b.chil the artist and less as Bhargava, the Creative Director possibly because of my unique visual style. After experimenting with a few different models for our business, we identified that our ultimate strength lies in the content creation and we leaned into that. Our small creative agency had the pleasure of working with various Fortune 500 companies, International Non-profits and large-scale Real Estate developments in Atlanta. We’ve also started a small artist focused endeavor named fourofour.co where we collaborate with local artists, provide a platform and help them monetize their art.
Has it been a smooth road?
There’s been a lot of struggles along the way. I honestly never thought that I would achieve what’s been possible so far. One of the biggest sources of struggle was the absence of resources and mentors early on. It felt like we were outsiders in our own city for a very long time. It’s one of the reasons why we take such a community-first approach with our business today.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We are a visually driven agency that offers branding, marketing, and content creation. We specialize in creative content creation and deployment for large-scale organizations. Our team is made up of photographers, videographers, designers and creatives of all of kind helping provide support to marketing teams and CEOs alike. We’re known to produce high-quality short stories or visuals that need to fit into a min. We’re most proud of our infrastructure as an agency and the culture we’ve created over time. We believe the world of content creation is changing and our approach has proven time and time again to be efficient while protecting our content creators. What sets us apart is that we’re not sticking to an old-school agency formula. None of us come from an agency background, so we don’t run the company as such. There are no madmen hanging out in our offices; there’s only real, authentic individuals.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Absolutely. Atlanta is still a young city compared many of the other cities known for advertising and creative content. There’s amazing potential in this space as our city grows.
Contact Info:
- Address: 151 Ted Turner Drive
- Website: chilcreative.com
- Phone: 6786369709
- Email: bhargava@chilcreative.com
- Instagram: @chilcreative and @b.chil
- Twitter: @chilcreative
- Other: chilstudios.com
Image Credit:
Photo of me: Roscoe Johnson, Photo of guy jumping and shoes: Nick D’Andria, Photo of interior: Michala Stewart, Photo of me and artist: Tanner White
Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
