Asshu Trikha

There was a strange crossroad in the early days of life when his father laid down a condition, "you continue playing with your friends or you work in films." Ashuu loved sports and spending time with his friends. It was a near impossible choice to make. But one has to guess that he loved films over anything. So just after his tenth standard, Ashuu started working in the film industry, learning the ropes of the trade. The year was 1978! One thing that Ashuu did not stop doing was studying. He graduated as an Electronics Engineer from Bombay University, after having finished his diploma in Electronics and Radio Engineering. He graduated in 1988. By this time his exposure of the technicalities of the film industry had taught him enough to foray into making educational films for engineering students. He used animations to explain the theories of engineering where the Z-axis was simpler to visualise than imagine. He got immediate success with it. Being the only one in the country making such educational films of high quality he had got exposed him to the world of animations. Animations was an extremely expensive affair to contract out. This is where his educational background helped him. He bought animation systems to support his educational films. The only impediment was that this form of films for educational purposes was extremely cash intensive. Income was trickling in through sales. Coming from a humble background, Ashuu was quick to understand that this business model was not sustainable. He immediately diversified into making technical films for leading corporates houses. This organically led him to making advertising films, and so began his journey of making television commercials. Having produced and directed almost 350 commercials, his run into the Bollywood industry was quite accidental. N R Pachisia was making his film called Ziddi. He wanted someone to think out of the box to promote his film. A mutual friend introduced Ashuu to Mr Pachisia. Out of this association was born a first of its kind promotional campaign for Ziddi. The unique feature was that the promo was made in English although the film was in Hindi. The moment the promo hit the networks, it took the nation and the industry by storm. Ashuu was now recognised as the wiz kid of Bolywood. There was no looking back. He then promoted more than 90 films which had record openings at the box office. His success ratio was more than 90%. A producer friend's wife once joked saying, "maybe the producer's should give you some percentage of the business that the films made because of your ingenuine marketing ploys." Having come from an advertising background, Ashuu understood the significance of air time and the value or rotation of the spots on air for recall. So, not only did Ashuu pioneer the business of promos in the industry, he also gave birth to the idea of 5 second, 10 second, 20 second spots besides countdown to release dates and audience reactions to the films. The business was booming. The producers that he interacted with respected his perception of the trade and his understanding of the nuances of film making, right from scripting to final film mixing. His educational films and TVCs had given him a rich exposure to the use of computer graphics and animations. Moving on to digital titling and VFX was just a natural thing to do. Thus came the next pioneering effort of lending digital VFX and titling to an industry that was simply analog in nature. Ashuu not only did promotions of films, he was also heavily involved with the creative aspects of a full length feature films by now, along with the digital side of film making. His life took a turn when he got the opportunity to direct his first feature film called 'Deewaanapan' for Puja films. Both the lead actors won debut awards for this film. The film was also nominated for action following which Ashuu has directed a number of films. He was nominated for breakthrough director award for his film Baabarr, and best visual effects for his film Alag. His directorial film, Sheesha had a song, "Yaar ko maine..." which was nominated for best song of the year. Besides directing well accepted films, Ashuu has also produced a film based on the coal mafia of the country called Koyelaanchal. He has also written scripts for a number of his films and acted in a couple of them. He has rubbed shoulders with many legends of the business, both in front of the camera and behind to bring in the finer points of story telling. He has also found a way to share his film making experiences through his blog called film curry. He publishes his blogs once a week. Married to Samriti Trikha in 1990, Ashuu Trikha has two children, a son Anmol Trikha and a younger daughter, Akshita Trikha. He has two siblings, a brother, Sonu Trikha & a sister, Rachita Mawani.