Stone Cold Media Launches Betting On Play Over Viewing
Stone Cold Media has launched in Mumbai as a full-service studio across gaming, content, technology, culture and experiences, founded by Jackie J. Thakkar, Ababil Patel and Tushar Patel.
- Studio: Stone Cold Media, abbreviated to SCM, Mumbai
- Founders: Jackie J. Thakkar, Chief Creative Officer; Ababil Patel, Chief Operations Officer; Tushar Patel, Chief Executive Officer
- Gaming division: Playing Human, the founders' existing gaming studio
- Practices: gaming, branded content, physical experiences and original entertainment IP
- Model: working with brands directly and alongside agencies
What Stone Cold Media Is Set Up To Sell
Playing Human becomes the gaming and interactive division, covering game design, development, art and interactive product creation, with prior work for organisations including YouTube, UN Women and ITC. Inside the new studio it will build brand narrative games, campaign activations, interactive products and games aimed at acquisition, engagement and education.
The content practice runs long form and short form, from series and mini-series to micro-dramas, music videos, brand films and creator-led work. Alongside both sits a physical line: customised cards and board games, branded physical play and on-ground activations.
The Argument Behind The Launch
Thakkar put the thesis plainly, saying the content ecosystem has become very good at producing things people can watch, and that the next opportunity is building things people want to participate in. That is a real distinction and an uncomfortable one for a lot of content shops, because participation is measured differently and fails more visibly.
Ababil Patel framed the discipline that follows: a game has to give people a reason to play, and the job is connecting that experience to what the brand wants to achieve, from the choices people make to the reasons they return. Bringing that thinking into the creative brief from the start is the structural claim here, rather than gaming being bolted on at execution.
Why The Order Of Operations Is The Pitch
Tushar Patel, who worked at an investment fund before co-founding Playing Human, said the ambition is not another gaming studio or another content agency, but a studio that starts with a business problem and assembles the right combination from there.
Every integrated launch says some version of that. What makes it testable here is that the three capabilities are genuinely different crafts, and the studio has committed to building original intellectual property that can run across all three at once.
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