From Sharing Memes To Representing Odia Culture - The Suna Pilas

"Our members come from different colleges and different states. We earlier knew each other mainly through sharing memes, until January, when we thought to give a shape to our aspiration; to portray the "urban culture" of Odisha. We had no previous exposure to social media handling, so to go safe, we thought we would start with shooting videos of various temples of BBSR and the lively Patia hub. This went on, rather unsystematically, till March, and then lockdown happened.

We realized then that this was going nowhere. We had to reach to people directly to send our message. Thus, "thesunapilas", where we planned to post the compiled versions of the random videos we had shot. The page did well initially and we had some 400-500 followers in just 3 days.

To experiment further, we started posting some relatable content and video memes which went well. Later, we came up with our first parody-Pal Pal Pakhala Ke Paas, which we believe was the first of its kind. It was an instant hit and we started getting calls for interviews, which we sadly couldn't attend due to the schedule of our singer. The song gained huge popularity on Instagram and YouTube, where people just robbed it and claimed their own. We then decided to open a YouTube channel to post our content and stop plagiarism.

Meanwhile, DMs poured in, where people told they were impressed by our uniqueness and wanted us to cover other cities of Odisha. With the help of Tanya Singh(Admin of @oh.delicious.cuttack),we covered Cuttack and got a massive reach of around 25-30 k. This day we realized what we are good at. Now, elevating the culture of Odisha was not just an aspiration, but a responsibility.

We didn't want to go down in people's mind as just another meme page. We wanted to be remembered as influencers, who could post content which was funny, relatable and sends a message to the audience. 

By God's grace, we received some contracts for social media handling as well as occasional promotions. It's been 9 months to this wonderful journey, and we have not faced a single controversy, thanks to our audience who have been the true Suna Pilas. 

We come from different colleges and native states and have met only once or twice in person, but we try to coordinate among ourselves through calls and edit our posts in our leisure. We don't know how far we can go as everyone has got plans and goals in life, but we will keep trying till it's possible."

-The Suna Pilas.