Narrative strategy · Content architecture · Bengaluru, working worldwide
I write the story your funders, buyers and reviewers each need to read.
Narrative strategy and senior writing for climate, impact and B2B organisations, built on eight years of positioning, proposals and long-form work for readers at GCF, UNDP, the World Bank and FCDO.
Half-finished briefs welcome. You’ll hear back within a week.
A typical edit
For organisations that cannot afford to get the story wrong.
Organisations I’ve worked with
Chronus · Value Network Ventures · Wobb.ai · Pride Circle · BeUnic · Pioneer Management Consultant · Her Career Foundation · Amazon · Commune
Organisations I’ve collaborated or trained with
One Future Collective · British Council · Museum of Art & Photography · Kanike Studio · Streetlevel Photoworks · BeFantastic
Institutions my proposals and reports were written for
GCF · UNDP · UN Women · World Bank/IFC · FCDO · GIZ · USAID
The funders and reviewers who read the climate work, as its intended audience.
Brands and creators I’ve written for in the creator economy
Campaign concepts and creator briefs across beauty, food, fashion, finance and couple influencers. Filter by category.
- Myntra
- Plum
- Juicy Chemistry
- SkinQ
- Naturali
- Carmesi
- Rangriti
- Melorra
- Candere
- Chumbak
- HDFC Life
- Tata Capital
- IDFC First Bank
- Policybazaar
- Moneycontrol
- Capital.com
- Apollo Pharmacy
- MediBuddy
- Zandu
- Dr. Vaidya’s
- Xiaomi
- Casio
- Bluehost
- GoMechanic
- Fenesta
- Deciwood
- Alpino
- Radico Khaitan
- John Distilleries
- apna
- Yellow Class
- Chitkara University
- Languify
- Jeevansathi
- Deccan Chronicle
- Social Samosa
Sectors
Nine sectors, each with its own reader.
Choose a sector to see what the strategy involved, who it was written for and the work it produced.
Sector 01
Climate finance and carbon markets
Narratives for carbon projects that have to satisfy investors, registries and communities at once, for nature-based and clean-energy projects in 18 countries.
Sector 02
Sustainability and ESG
Turning impact data into reports and claims that hold up under scrutiny, with wording that keeps clear of greenwashing risk.
Sector 03
Diversity, equity and inclusion
Inclusion language that can be checked, for a workplace equality index, HR teams and a public language audit and toolkit.
Sector 04
HR tech
Positioning and demand content for mentoring and workforce software sold to HR and L&D leaders.
Sector 05
Creator economy and influencer marketing
Content for an influencer marketing platform with two readers at once: brands buying campaigns and creators deciding whether to join.
Sector 06
E-commerce
Risk and compliance documentation across 23 international marketplaces, plus product listing copy.
Sector 07
Workforce skilling
Guides, FAQs and training material for candidates and employers in large skilling programmes, written for readers with very different literacy levels.
Sector 08
Education
Guidance for parents and teachers on queer and trans inclusion in schools, written to be warm and precise in the same sentence.
Sector 09
Women’s careers and non-profit programmes
Content for women returning to work, and the stories that help those programmes raise money.
The problem I’m hired for
The register changes by audience. The discipline doesn’t.
Most organisations tell one story to six audiences and wonder why four of them never act. A funder scans for risk and evidence, a buyer wants cost and proof, and a community partner checks whether they were spoken about or spoken with. I build one narrative spine for the organisation, then write each version so it survives the person reading it.
Benefit-sharing is written into the project’s governance, so revenue reaches households even if the project team changes.
Every credit traces to a named restoration site, with community benefit audited alongside the carbon.
You decide how the fund is spent. The project reports to your village council, not the other way round.
Illustrative rewrite: one commitment, written for three readers.
Case files
The decision behind the deliverable.
Each file shows the brief as it arrived, the problem underneath it, the move I made, and the writing itself, marked up the way an editor would mark it.
Roots and Returns
The reader who had to say yes: Investors, buyers and policymakers at London Climate Action Week
Climate finance audiences hear “community benefit” constantly and believe it rarely.
Curated and wrote every panel. In a London heatwave, visitors stayed long after the programme.
Commune
The reader who had to say yes: Conscious buyers, retailers and ESG teams choosing gifts and suppliers
A marketplace of traceable goods had to explain why provenance matters before it could sell anything.
Built from a blank page, launched at Roots and Returns, and live at communearth.com.
Queer Ecologies
The reader who had to say yes: A whole climate organisation, most of them non-specialists
Queer theory can sound abstract, or political, to a room of carbon practitioners.
A 42-slide Discovery Session that colleagues called one of the most engaging in the series.
Not Your Diversity Checklist
The reader who had to say yes: Comms leads, DEI practitioners, grant writers and HR teams
Most inclusion vocabulary is built to be believed rather than verified.
A free language audit and toolkit, published through the One Future Fellowship.
Field stories at VNV
The reader who had to say yes: Carbon buyers and funders on LinkedIn and Instagram
Project data proves a credit exists. It doesn’t make anyone care who stands behind it.
About 43 logged posts across two channels, including the Trees for Livelihoods series.
Pride in Education
The reader who had to say yes: Parents, teachers and school leaders
Sensitive subjects need warmth and precision at once, in a carousel’s worth of words.
About 95 Instagram posts for Pride Circle’s education programme, where I led ideation and strategy.
Ways to work together
Start with a day. Stay for the year if it works.
Start small
A one-day positioning workshop, a two-week narrative audit, or a talk for your team.
Fixed fee, confirmed in your scope.
Book a workshopRetainers
A standing seat in your content team at 15 or 20 hours a week, with a monthly planning call.
One monthly fee for 15 or 20 hours a week, with a six-month minimum.
Ask about a retainerProjects
Positioning and message architecture, voice guides, website copy, funder narratives and long-form reports.
One fixed fee per project, agreed in writing before work starts.
Send a briefEvery fee is fixed in writing before work starts. Share a budget range in the brief and I’ll scope to what you have.
Formats
What I’ve written, edited and shipped.
Eight years of deliverables, filed by where they go. Open a drawer, or search for the thing you need.
89 formats in 9 drawers
Drawer 01 of 9
Strategy and brand
The decisions every other piece is written from.
- Positioning statements
- Messaging frameworks
- Brand narratives
- Voice and style guides
- Editorial guidelines
- Content strategies
- Content audits
- Editorial calendars
- Audience personas
- Communications plans
- Crisis communications plans
- Naming and taglines
Drawer 02 of 9
Long-form and thought leadership
Writing that has to hold up on a careful second read.
- Whitepapers
- Ebooks
- Research reports
- Impact and annual reports
- ESG and sustainability reports
- Policy briefs
- Explainers
- Case studies
- Op-eds and bylined articles
- Newsletters
- Blogs
- Guides and playbooks
- Toolkits
- Zines
Drawer 03 of 9
Funders, investors and partners
Documents written for the person who can say no.
- Grant proposals
- Concept notes
- Theory-of-change narratives
- Pitch decks
- Investor memos
- Partnership proposals
- Expressions of interest
- RFP responses
- Donor reports
- Capability statements
- One-pagers
Drawer 04 of 9
PR and media
Language built to be quoted accurately.
- Press releases
- Media kits
- Journalist pitches
- Spokesperson briefs
- Talking points
- Q&A documents
- Holding statements
- Speeches
- Award entries
Drawer 05 of 9
Social and digital
Short forms that still carry the argument.
- Social posts
- Carousels
- Captions
- Video and reel scripts
- LinkedIn thought leadership and ghostwriting
- Ad copy
- Influencer and creator briefs
- Community guidelines
Drawer 06 of 9
Web and product
Words people read while trying to do something else.
- Website copy
- Landing pages
- UI and UX microcopy
- Onboarding flows
- Product listings and descriptions
- SEO content
- Email sequences
- Push notifications
- Help-centre articles
- FAQs
- Chatbot response templates
Drawer 07 of 9
Events and exhibitions
Writing that has to work in a room, read standing up.
- Event concept notes
- Exhibition curation and wall text
- Invitations, banners, standees and programmes
- Run-of-show documents
- MC and moderator scripts
- Workshop decks
- Facilitator guides
- Participant handouts
- Post-event reports
Drawer 08 of 9
Internal and technical
Documentation teams actually follow.
- Internal communications
- Town-hall decks
- SOPs and process documentation
- Training modules
- Onboarding guides
- Knowledge bases
- DITA and XML documentation
- Risk documentation
Drawer 09 of 9
Design-adjacent
Briefs and copy designers can build from.
- Creative briefs for designers
- Infographic copy
- Brochures
- Flyers
- Posters
- Signage
- Packaging copy
That one isn’t on the list yet.
If it’s writing with a reader who has to act on it, I can probably do it. Send the brief and I’ll tell you honestly.
Send a brief- Positioning statements
- Messaging frameworks
- Brand narratives
- Voice and style guides
- Editorial guidelines
- Content strategies
- Content audits
- Editorial calendars
- Audience personas
- Communications plans
- Crisis communications plans
- Naming and taglines
- Whitepapers
- Ebooks
- Research reports
- Impact and annual reports
- ESG and sustainability reports
- Policy briefs
- Explainers
- Case studies
- Op-eds and bylined articles
- Newsletters
- Blogs
- Guides and playbooks
- Toolkits
- Zines
- Grant proposals
- Concept notes
- Theory-of-change narratives
- Pitch decks
- Investor memos
- Partnership proposals
- Expressions of interest
- RFP responses
- Donor reports
- Capability statements
- One-pagers
- Press releases
- Media kits
- Journalist pitches
- Spokesperson briefs
- Talking points
- Q&A documents
- Holding statements
- Speeches
- Award entries
- Social posts
- Carousels
- Captions
- Video and reel scripts
- LinkedIn thought leadership and ghostwriting
- Ad copy
- Influencer and creator briefs
- Community guidelines
- Website copy
- Landing pages
- UI and UX microcopy
- Onboarding flows
- Product listings and descriptions
- SEO content
- Email sequences
- Push notifications
- Help-centre articles
- FAQs
- Chatbot response templates
- Event concept notes
- Exhibition curation and wall text
- Invitations, banners, standees and programmes
- Run-of-show documents
- MC and moderator scripts
- Workshop decks
- Facilitator guides
- Participant handouts
- Post-event reports
- Internal communications
- Town-hall decks
- SOPs and process documentation
- Training modules
- Onboarding guides
- Knowledge bases
- DITA and XML documentation
- Risk documentation
- Creative briefs for designers
- Infographic copy
- Brochures
- Flyers
- Posters
- Signage
- Packaging copy
After you send the brief
Questions first, then a price, then the writing.
- BriefSend what you have, finished or not.
- QuestionsWithin a week, you get the questions I’d ask before writing a word.
- ScopeOne fixed fee and a timeline, in writing.
- DraftsA first draft and two rounds of revisions, delivered in your templates.
- HandoverFinal files plus a one-page note on the choices I made, so your team can keep the voice.
I work inside your stack: HubSpot, Google Analytics and Search Console, Notion, Asana, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, DITA and XML.
What colleagues say
“They combine creative thinking with strategic clarity and have the confidence to see a vision through, even when it’s not immediately obvious to others.”
“Unlike most writers who simply hand over text, Aryan began providing briefs that practically laid out the visual hierarchy for me.”Commune launch
“Aryan is an exemplary colleague, and one whose vision can change the trajectory of storytelling in an organization.”Rebrand decks
“They often notice things or bring in perspectives that the rest of us may have missed.”Editorial review
“Fewer review rounds and better understanding of our projects.”Energy tech decks
Quoted with written permission. References on request.
Practice notes
- Trained in
- English and cultural studies
- Reads for
- What a document assumes, as much as what it says
- Works across
- SaaS, platforms and marketplaces, climate and inclusion
- Also practises
- Documentary photography, curation and teaching
- Writes about
- Language, power and who gets to be the subject of a sentence
- Pronouns
- They/them
About
I came to strategy through cultural studies, documentary photography and eight years of deadlines.
I’m Aryan Gulati (they/them), a narrative strategist and writer based in Bengaluru. Cultural studies taught me to read a document for what it assumes as much as for what it says, and documentary photography taught me to stay with a subject until it stops performing for the camera. Both habits shape how I work: before writing anything, I ask who has to act on it, what they already believe, and what would make them check a claim rather than nod at it.
What keeps me curious is the distance between the language institutions use and the lives that language is meant to describe. In climate and inclusion work, that might be a project explaining itself to the village it depends on, or a company describing inclusion to the people it hires.
In technology the distance is between what a product can do and what a buyer, a user or an engineer needs to read before they trust it. I write across that whole stack: positioning and demand content for SaaS, the microcopy inside an app, structured technical documentation in DITA and XML, and the search content that decides whether anyone finds the product at all. Outside client work I curate exhibitions, teach guest lectures and write about language and power on LinkedIn, because each of them sharpens the other.
- I ask before I write.
- Every claim carries its source.
- AI drafts research notes; I write every sentence you receive.
Next step
Send me the brief, or your client’s.
Start a project
You have a story that has to land with someone who can say no.
- You answer to funders, investors, regulators or a board, and the writing has to survive their scrutiny.
- You need positioning, a voice or a narrative that several teams will build on.
- You want one senior person who writes, rather than an agency layer between you and the writer.
- Your budget fits the rate card, or you’d like a scope to find out.
A reply within a week, with the questions I’d ask and a fixed fee. Or email me directly.
For agencies and studios
I work inside your team, under your name.
When your client needs senior narrative or writing capacity, I join the engagement for one deliverable or the whole project, delivered in your templates and review flow.
- You have a client brief that needs positioning, a voice or long-form writing.
- You want a positioning brief your designers can build from.
- You need white-label work, with an NDA on request.
- You can give me one point of contact and consolidate feedback into one round per draft.
Choose “A client of my agency or studio” in the form. You’ll get a scope and a fixed fee within a week.
not sure which? email me
Questions
Before you send it.
What does a project cost?
It depends on the scope, so every project gets one fixed fee in writing before work starts. Share a budget range in the brief and I’ll scope to what you have.
How soon can you start?
Usually within a week of a signed scope. Urgent work is possible on a retainer.
Will you sign an NDA or work under our name?
Yes. Agency work is white-label by default, with an NDA on request.
Do you use AI?
For research and first-pass structure, and the scope says so. Every sentence you receive, I’ve written or rewritten.
Do you work with clients outside India?
Yes. I invoice in INR, USD, GBP or EUR and work across time zones.