Summary: Nived Krishna is a filmmaker, digital marketer, and creative strategist who built his career with resilience and self-belief. From teaching himself filmmaking in school to landing high-profile clients in India and New York, he shows how confidence, cold outreach, SEO, and community-building can turn ambition into opportunity in a competitive creative industry. Sitting with Dezi founder Nitya Mehrotra, Nived Krishna shares his experiences and advice for creatives.
Art Is an Unprofessional Career Choice
Raised in Delhi by civil-service parents, Nived's filmmaking journey began in seventh grade, when his father bought him a DSLR camera. With the help of YouTube, he taught himself video editing and production, which eventually led him to direct a school annual sports day video that was played to a cheering auditorium of two thousand people. That was the moment he decided to be a filmmaker. However, a career counselor labelled filmmaking as "unprofessional" and with no job security, steering him toward management as a backup plan.
He had already started a small digital marketing company in twelfth grade, so he did a BBA in marketing and advertising at Christ University. His choice of course was mainly because the final semester involved advertisement filmmaking. He later skipped campus placements to avoid the conventional corporate route and landed an apprenticeship at CashKaro as a video editor, eventually managing content for both founders personally. He went on to become part of the founding days of WLDD, one of the biggest marketing companies in India today. Now he works in New York City, building mini series, doing ad shoots, and making films with the big names he always wanted, all while leveraging his sharp digital marketing skills.
Talking Your Way In
Nived built his early career by securing roles that required experience, of which he had none back then. He still secured a job as a junior brand strategist by arguing that since he could create the content himself, someone who can execute and strategize is far more valuable than someone who only strategizes. He dedicated himself completely to the company by going to the office daily even when remote working was allowed.
Within two months, he had worked on 100+ campaigns for clients like ZEE5, Taj, Panchayat, KGF, and OnePlus, pioneered meme-page marketing in India, and got promoted to creative strategist. He also landed Sony Pictures as his first international client, which went viral and led to more work from Sony.
Nitya further asked about his bold approach to career growth, and Nived explained:
Even before I was properly "in the industry," when I first talked to my company's CEO, I wasn't talking to him as a prospective employee, I was talking to him as an equal, a creative. I spoke his language and that confidence makes all the difference.
Strategizing Cold Outreach
When discussing with Nitya how to actually execute a networking strategy, Nived breaks down his own process for cold emailing. He uses automated sales platforms like Apollo to pull targeted lists of production company founders. To ensure his strategy works, he says:
I'd hit people through as many channels as possible: website application, email, LinkedIn, and sometimes a general "careers" inbox too, so there was no way my resume got missed.
Arriving in New York with no contacts, Nived googled production companies, submitted a contact form with a personalized subject line reading "Not a client, but your biggest fan," and secured a meeting the very next day. By utilizing his connections with large marketing pages in India, it did not take him long to grow the client's social media engagement. Nitya asks if this comfort with cold outreach comes from confidence or delusional self-belief. Nived explains that he goes into every interaction expecting to win the person over, and makes sure he meets potential clients face-to-face in a cafe.
Importance of SEO and Visibility
When Nitya asked him for advice for artists who aren't naturally confident or extroverted and aren't necessarily chasing marketing or film clients, Nived highlights that an artist's internet presence matters far more than just confidence. The biggest mistake creatives make is ignoring search engine optimization for their own names.
When someone searches you, search engines pull from everywhere you exist online: LinkedIn, IMDb, Backstage, and articles you've written, and stitch together a picture. If you only have LinkedIn and nothing else, that search comes up nearly empty. The more places your name and work legitimately show up, the stronger your discoverability, regardless of whether people are actually reading all of it.
He notes this from his own experience, recalling a time when he struggled to cast an Indian actor for a New York shoot, not because there was a lack of talent but because of a lack of visibility and online presence. He urges creatives to utilize all the platforms and create legitimate hyperlinks tied to their names, ensuring strong discoverability even if they are not naturally outgoing.
Building a Talent Network
Nived has built his most valuable network by identifying admins of high-quality, small niche pages and building a private group chat. The goal of this network was to build a mutual support system through sharing work and recommending each other. That group became a real growth engine, and several of those admins have massive online reach. They still share a close relationship, and whenever Nived needs someone like an editor, colorist, music composer, or writer for a project, he can turn to that community.
Nived tells Nitya that he constantly shows up in person to filmmaker meetups, and instead of just exchanging Instagram handles, he always saves phone numbers with specific notes on what that person does.
Nived Krishna's journey is a testament to the fact that the right strategies can lead you to your dream projects. Building a career in this hyper-competitive industry requires a calculated effort at balancing boldness and confidence with proper digital strategy to ensure visibility. Nived shows that forging a creative identity requires manufacturing your own luck by being willing to go out of your comfort zone, speak the language of the decision-makers, and engineer your own visibility.