The Tale Of Three Aces

A few years after the 2008 financial crisis, three Wall Street bankers began thinking of starting something on their own. That’s how digital entertainment company Pocket Aces was born in 2013. Turns out it wasn’t a bad bet after all.

- Debabrata Das

WHO DOESN’T LIKE A BIT OF GAMBLING? Sure, it might not pay off all the time, but it is equally true that those who never take a chance run the risk of accomplishing nothing in life. This the story of three 36-year-olds who took a leap of faith and are around to tell the tale.

In another life, Ashwin Suresh, Aditi Shrivastava, and Anirudh Pandita would be climbing the corporate ladder at a Wall Street firm. Instead, they chose to ditch the American Dream and founded Pocket Aces, one of India’s most exciting digital entertainment companies, in 2013. Over the past five years, the company has developed some of India’s most popular digital media brands such as FilterCopy, Dice Media, and Gobble which make video content and web shows, and a mobile app called Loco, which focusses on gaming. FilterCopy, Dice Media, and Gobble together have over 12 million subscribers/followers on Facebook and YouTube. And last year they entered the big league when Netflix co-produced one of their long-form shows, Little Things. Today, with a weekly reach of well over 40 million and more than 1 billion viewers over the past three years, Pocket Aces’ viewership numbers are enviable, even when compared with the biggest names in the entertainment industry.

All this has been achieved by three people born to middle-class professional families with no history of entrepreneurship. While Ashwin grew up in Dubai, Aditi and Anirudh, who are childhood friends, grew up in Kuwait. Having left India in search of a better life, their parents wanted the three to go further West and live the American Dream. All three did, albeit briefly. They lived in New York and worked on Wall Street. Ashwin worked in investment banking and private equity at Citigroup; Aditi spent over five years at Goldman Sachs; and Anirudh worked with the likes of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Ishtitmar World Capital.