Goodfellas Studio has positioned itself as a lean, collaborative creative production house driven by emotional storytelling and cultural sharpness. With an integrated team structure and a philosophy rooted in ‘effectivity,’ the Mumbai-based studio aims to create work that not only looks good, but moves people and brands alike.

Founded in Mumbai in 2016 by Ridhesh Sejpal, Goodfellas Studio emerged from a simple but ambitious idea: “Great branded content shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for the biggest budgets or the oldest names.” The vision was to build a studio that prioritised collaboration, agility, and strong storytelling while staying accessible to brands looking for meaningful creative work.

“Be the good guys, make great things, do it together. Almost a decade in, that’s still the brief we hold ourselves to,” said Sejpal.

That thinking extends directly into the way the company operates. Goodfellas functions with a tightly integrated in-house team comprising writers, producers, editors, motion designers, and business development professionals, all working under one roof. Creative, production, and post-production often happen “in the same conversation,” allowing the studio to move quickly while maintaining creative consistency.

The company intentionally keeps its structure lean, supplementing the core team with trusted specialists depending on the project. “No layers. No ‘that’s not my department.’ No bloated overheads getting in the way of what ends up on the screen,” Sejpal explained.

At the centre of Goodfellas’ culture is a philosophy the studio calls ‘effectivity’, what Sejpal describes as the intersection between creativity and effectiveness. “There’s a tired binary in our industry: make something beautiful, or make something that sells. We don’t accept the trade-off,” he added.

Every project is approached with the same question: “Does this make you feel something, and make you do something?” According to Sejpal, that insistence on balancing emotion with impact may make the studio “harder to work with,” but it also makes the work “harder to ignore.”

That perspective is deeply tied to the studio’s understanding of Indian audiences and culture. For Sejpal, the most Indian thing about Goodfellas is its emotional register.

“India doesn’t do simple emotion, it does layered, contradictory, joyful-painful, festival-and-funeral-in-the-same-week emotion,” he remarked.

Rather than creating work that talks at audiences, the studio focuses on making audiences feel seen.

The studio’s body of work reflects this range. From Lenovo Yoga’s #BraveNewArt creator reality series and Audi India’s #ProgressThatMatters featuring Virat Kohli to Hershey’s #ShraddhaWaliDiwali and Krafton’s Bullet Echo India 2.0 campaign, Goodfellas has consistently positioned itself at the intersection of culture, storytelling, and branded entertainment.

The production house has also embraced AI as part of its evolving workflow. According to Sejpal, AI has helped compress timelines for mood boards, pre-visualisation, reference generation, and post-production without compromising quality. “It’s made us faster at the boring parts and braver at the interesting ones,” he said.

At the same time, he believes the emotional instincts behind storytelling remain deeply human. “What hasn’t changed: knowing why an AR Rahman chord lands the way it does, or why a festival film needs to play differently in Nagpur than in Bandra. That call stays human,” he shared.

As Goodfellas Studio looks ahead, its focus remains clear: create culturally rooted, emotionally resonant work without compromising on effectiveness. In an industry often divided between art and commerce, the studio is attempting to prove the two can coexist and thrive together.

Before any film reaches the screen, however, Sejpal believes the most important ingredient is trust. “Trust the brief you wrote,” he said. While brands often spend weeks getting the strategy right, defining the insight and sharpening the ambition, many lose confidence once the first cut arrives. Some of Goodfellas’ most successful work came from clients who leaned in when the work felt uncomfortable rather than retreating from it. As Sejpal puts it, “Courage in the conference room makes all the difference on screen.”

A creator reality series that pitted next-gen artists against AI to co-create a museum of the future. 25M views on Disney+ Hotstar, 3x spike in product interest, 88% YoY sales growth.

The brief was premium. The idea was personal. A film that explored what progress means to someone who’s already won everything.

Diwali campaigns are a dime a dozen. This one found the emotion no one else was chasing — the quiet devotion behind the celebration.

A logo reveal that became a personality moment — capturing the energy of one of India’s most iconic athletes and the brand he’s built in his own image. Bold, precise, unmistakably him.

Not an ad. Not a music video. A meditative visual piece for an artist whose music needs no introduction, but whose creative universe deserved a new kind of frame.

A barbershop. A battle royale. Only in India. We made a tactical shooter feel desi — and the gaming community couldn't scroll past it.

GoodFellas is a full-service creative production studio in Mumbai. We handle production, and where the brief calls for it, creative too. If you’ve got a script that deserves better than the usual, come find us here or email contact@goodfellas.studio.

This article was part of a special focus on Indian independent creative companies circulated alongside Manifest's June issue, which can be bought here.

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