Sumeet Vyas on the appeal of podcasts, as Nidhi Singh and the actor, present season 3 of Permanent Roommates as audio series
Letty Mariam Abraham (MID-DAY; March 24, 2020)

Reinventing a much-loved show can be a boon or a bane. But Sumeet Vyas and Nidhi Singh — aka Mikesh and Tanya of Permanent Roommates — are willing to take the gamble as they present the third season of the romantic comedy as a podcast on Audible Suno.

Vyas admits that they had hit a roadblock on how to take Mikesh and Tanya's love story forward, and a shift in the medium is probably just what the doctor ordered. "We had already done two seasons of Permanent Roommates, and similar content was available on the web. So, we were apprehensive of doing another season [fearing that] it would become one of the many things that are available out there. So, when [the idea of presenting it in an audio format] came about, we were excited to take the story forward." The leads aside, the 20-episode series will have the supporting cast lend a voice to their parts.

Oddly enough, Vyas who occasionally doubles up as a scriptwriter for TVF, stayed away from the process this time around. "They probably thought I wasn't capable enough," he jokes, before adding, "Both Nidhi and I were consulted after the script was written because we had spent much more time with the characters compared to the new writers who came on board."

It must be a novel experience for Singh to trade her place in front of the camera for one behind the mic. She weighs the pros and cons of both mediums as she says, "Even if it is a half-hour shoot, several things come into play — the make-up, costume and hair are an important part of making a show. But here, we had to enter a dubbing room and become Tanya and Mikesh. It was a new experience because Sumeet and I had never dubbed together. We were able to play off each other's energies."

While Vyas has previously done radio commercials, Singh considers herself a rookie in the dubbing world and admits it took her a while to find her feet. "[Initially], I had technical problems like standing too close to the mic, and at other times, too far from it. Also, I would often break into laughter because the material was so funny."

Vyas has his own reasons for developing an affinity for podcasts — no room for vanity. "I was happy to not dress up, for a change. I could just walk in, in my shorts and flip-flops, and start dubbing for the role. You are expected to look a certain way [during shoot]. Here, I was free from being vain." His quick-witted co-star doesn't let the opportunity to pull his leg slide by. "In real life, he is pretty much like that — the laidback guy in shorts. [But when it comes to a shoot], Sumeet is the heroine on the set," she laughs.

Podcasts have become increasingly popular in the past few years. Vyas and Singh may be mighty excited to try their hand at the audio medium, but as artistes who know the charm of the visual medium all too well, it begs the obvious question — can the audio medium have as much impact as its visual counterpart? "Listening to audio is like reading a book. When you read a book, you add your own imagination to it — you visualise mountains or a house; you imagine the people [being mentioned] and how they look. So, that visualisation is unique to you. Here too, each listener will have a unique visual for what they hear. That is the USP of this medium," concludes Vyas.

Web sensation Nidhi Singh on returning to the scene with Apharan, and foraying into movies with an unlikely debut
Letty Mariam Abraham (MID-DAY; January 15, 2019)

After becoming a web sensation with TVF’s Permanent roommates, Nidhi Singh is back on the scene with ALtBalaji’s Apaharan. In a tête-à-tête, the actor talks about going bold for the show, and her tryst with Bollywood. Edited excerpts from the interview.

You have been seen in only three projects since Permanent Roommates. Has it been a conscious move?
I haven’t been choosy; the fact is that I haven’t been selected for a lot of roles that I would have loved to do. I’m learning and trying to make up for what I lack. Having said that, I’m stubborn when it comes to my work. So, if I don’t feel challenged by a project, I don’t take it up.

Your latest show, Apharan, sees you working with Mahie Gill and Arunoday Singh. Since they have been in the industry for long, did you feel like a newbie on the set?
I’m not a trained actor, so every day was like going to school. I wanted to imbibe their positive traits. They are more disciplined and evolved as artistes. I didn’t have any scenes with Mahie, but luckily, I spent time with her during promotions. Watching the way she conducts herself was a huge learning experience for me.

Your bold role is being much talked about. Did you have any misgivings about it?
I didn’t have any apprehensions because I loved Ranjana’s journey from the word go. Those scenes did not feel forced at all. Also, I had developed trust in Siddharth sir [Sengupta, director] and Arunoday.

How did your family react to the intimate scenes?
My brothers loved the show, but my parents haven’t watched it yet. They have seen the trailer, and the scenes didn’t seem to bother them. The audience’s reaction has been positive. There’s a general curiosity about who my daddy is [ referring to the now viral scene].

How would you compare the working style of ALTBalaji with that of TVF?
TVF is like family to me. I was nervous about working with ALTBalaji since they are part of a giant studio, but they turned out to be just as warm. The common factor is that both production houses take their work seriously. Everything else is secondary.

You also forayed into Bollywood with Dil Juunglee last year.
I was eager to make my movie debut. Initially, I was apprehensive about playing such a quirky character, but I took the plunge because the role intrigued me. I was also keen to work with Saqib [Saleem] because I loved his work in Bombay Talkies ( 2013).

Last year was a trying phase for you personally.
Besides my work, a few personal challenges demanded my attention last year. My father suffered a brain stroke in the beginning of the year. After that, my mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer and underwent a major surgery. Fortunately, my parents are in the pink of health today.

Ahead of his appearance on the digital show, The Story, actor-writer Sumeet Vyas says he’s eager to pen scripts that are “not ordinary”
Letty Mariam Abraham (MID-DAY; April 3, 2018)

Apart from delivering some power-packed performances, Sumeet Vyas has penned several scripts for the web. Vyas will share a few interesting highlights of his life on Zee5’s web show, The Story, which sees celebrities narrate and enact events from their life. But Vyas insists that this wouldn’t be the first time incidents from his life will play out on screen. A writer, he says, weaves such occurring into almost every script he pens. In an interview with mid-day, he talks about working on the next season of Tripling, and how the web space is finally being acknowledged by bigwigs of the film industry.

What inspired you to narrate incidents from your life?
As a scriptwriter, I’ve penned several scenes for reel, ones that were inspired from my life. But few know that they were derived from real-life events. When I got an opportunity to enact scenes for a show that talks about my life, I was interested. When people know that part of the story being depicted is true, they tend to be more interested in the film. It was tough to zero in on the story that I wanted to narrate because depicting certain events of my life may be illegal [laughs]. But, you can never tell a real story without garnishing it. The challenge was to keep from dramatising it so much that the truth is lost. It was an interesting process.

With an increase in the film offers coming your way, will we see less of you on the web?
I’m writing the second season of TVF Tripling (2016). CEOgiri, the show I star in, is already airing. Today, if you are doing a web show, it’s not frowned upon. Initially, when Permanent Roommates, one of my first successful web outings released, people accepted it. But I felt a certain amount of resistance from the film and TV industries in acknowledging this medium. Today, everyone is participating in it. Filmmakers cannot ensure their film is successful by buying all the screens. The web offers freedom, it’s a democratic medium.

What, according to you, defines a web show’s success?
People gauge success by the number of views it has received, but I don’t believe in this method. Nowadays, TRPs can be boosted by a tech-savvy person. But, when people send you personal messages and positive responses on social media or in person, you get a sense of the number of viewers watching your show.

What, according to you, has been your best written work?
I enjoyed writing Tripling. The experience was surreal and overwhelming. Now, I want to attempt a genre that explores what’s not ordinary. Maybe a psychotic thriller or an action drama. I want to explore the Black Swan in me.

Tripling garnered mixed reactions. What kind of feedback did you receive?
People said that the climax didn’t meet their expectations. It was a conscious decision to have an unconventional ending.

What can we expect in season 2?
It’s a secret [laughs]. Season 2 will be a road trip across select Indian cities. We are trying to include cultural influences in the story.

Nidhi Singh who, 6 years later, is making her big screen debut with a Taapsee Pannu, Saqib Saleem-starrer
Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 12, 2018)

Nidhi Singh is gearing up for her Bollywood debut in Dil Juunglee, which also features Taapsee Pannu and Saqib Saleem. She plays Delhi girl Ayesha in the modern-day love story which is about how your idea of friendship and love changes as you move from the 20s to the mid-20s.

“I play Saqib’s girlfriend in the film. Ayesha is loud in her dressing and her behavior, quirky and fun, a girl with no filters. The shoot was liberating because though I’m not shy, I’m not quite so loud in real life so it was exciting to explore that side to my personality,” Nidhi laughs.

The actress who became popular as Permanent Roommates’s Tanya, gushes about how good Saqib was in Bombay Talkies. “That was serious and intense but during this shoot I realised he was a lot of fun like his character Sumeet,” she smiles.

Next, Nidhi dreams of sharing the screen with her childhood idol Amitabh Bachchan, “I am from Allahabad too and as a kid after I watched his Ajooba I actually believed that there was a dolphin somewhere waiting for me to call so it could swim out to me. After that I made a pact with my mom that if there was a Bachchan film playing, I should be allowed to watch it even if I had school the next day,” she reminisces.

The actress goes on to say that if things had turned out as planned, she would have started out with a blink-and-miss appearance in the Ranbir Kapoor-Priyanka Chopra starrer Barfi in 2012. “I love Ranbir and I had shot this really small scene for the Anurag Basu film. It was a chase sequence and I was one of Ileana’s (D’Cruz) in-laws. Ranbir had to come running towards me, I had to open a door which hits him. I did it just because of Dada and Ranbir but unfortunately it was snipped out during the edit,” Nidhi sighs.

Deepali Singh (DNA; November 20, 2016)

The likes of Rajit Kapur, Shernaz Patel, Kumud Mishra, Asrani, Alok Nath and others are going digital. The online medium is youth-oriented and experience brings a refreshing take to this rather clutter-breaking platform. So, imagine our surprise when we saw the otherwise sanskaari babuji Alok Nath go all Sinskaari on us and dole out gyaan on everything from premarital sex to role-play. The series failed to take off, but it made a point.

At this point in their lives, these actors have seen and done it all on their preferred mediums — TV, films and theatre. The internet is a whole different creature. Alok echoes the sentiment. “I think my contemporaries and I are at a stage when we have been there and done that,” he says, “We are at a stage when the kids have grown up and doing their own thing. We want to do stuff now that excites us because we have done so much. We want to do a variety of stuff and if we get that variety on web, why not?”

Medium doesn’t matter

Speaking to this newspaper a couple of days ago, Satish Shah, who is making his debut in a web series based on his popular TV show Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai, had said, that "The medium didn’t really matter. I will be working with the same set of actors and same set-up and it will be as good or better than before,” he told us.

Indeed, most actors agree that the platform doesn’t really matter. Acclaimed actor Kumud Mishra, believes that they are here to act, and not to worry about which platform it’s shown on. The actor, who played the role of the lovable father Chinmay Sharma in TVF’s latest web series Tripling, says, “I have liked almost all of TVF’s work. They are new people with interesting ideas and that honesty reflects in their work,” he says, of his reasons for working in the show.

Theatre and film actor Shernaz Patel, who played the role of his wife in the same series, admits that the digital platform is great for people like her who are too scared to commit to television’s huge demands. “Frankly, nobody’s watching television anymore because everyone’s watching web shows. This is the future. Either you embrace it, or you miss out on a wonderful opportunity,” she adds.

Interesting storylines

When Kumud talks of interesting storylines and characters, he isn’t just parading another line. Earlier this year, Permanent Roommates Season 2 saw veteran actor Asrani playing Dadaji and creating mischief in the lead couple’s life and Sachin Pilgaonkar as the grandfather who does not believe in imparting sex education to kids in Y-Films’ Sex Chat with Pappu and Papa.

While Tripling had Shernaz playing a mother, she did not shy away from giving relationship advice to her son. In Y-Films’ Bang Baaja Baaraat, she is shown kissing a much younger Neil Bhoopalam. “I’am lucky that both the shows I did had me playing fun characters, breaking moulds,” she adds.

Youth connect

While the actors agree that they don’t have the target audience in mind when they take up such projects, they admit that it is an added plus that the youth is able to relate to them in these shows. Says Kumud, “In fact, a lot of people have come to know about me because I have been a part of a web series,” he agrees.

Talking about his own experience in Sinskaari, Alok admits he was apprehensive about taking on the show. “Then I thought, it’s a transition to another medium and I should try it. As far as films are concerned, the kind of roles I have been doing all my life have dried up. We get roles in television because the small screen is still in the regressive mode. Oldies are still goldies there. But when it comes to the contemporary content, we are nowhere. So when I got an offer to do a web-series, I latched on to it,” he says.

Perhaps Darshan Jariwala, who played the role of the quirky father in Permanent Roommates Season 2, sums it up when he says, “Nowadays, youngsters want to click a selfie with me, not because I am a National Award winning actor for Gandhi My Father, but because I acted in PR-2!”

Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 7, 2016)

For an actor-writer whose claim to fame was the growing web-series culture in India, it is understandable that the talented Sumeet Vyas has chosen to play one-half of an urban couple whose life is plagued by the complexities of the tech-world, both professionally and personally.

The Permanent Roommates-star who currently features in Tripling, another web-series by Arunabh Kumar's The Viral Fever (TVF), will next be seen opposite Kalki Koechlin in Rakhee Sandilya's Ribbon, which kicks off at the end of October in Mumbai. Shot entirely in the Bay, the film will release mid-2017. It follows the couple's journey through five crucial years of their life.

"It is a heartfelt portrayal of something which is extremely relevant today. Even though the film offers have been pouring in and my parents have been wondering why I am turning down so much money, I've held my ground. This film felt right. Either I'm extremely intelligent or definitely stupid," laughs Sumeet, fresh out of a workshop, adding that Ribbon is an extremely honest film with a fantastic twist. "There is so much emotional turmoil that an urban couple goes through. The man and wife want to chase their professional dreams, and at the same time, go the conventional way and have kids. It can be tricky," he says.

Over the last decade, he's crossed paths with the "fantastic" Kalki a few times in the world of theatre. The two actors have been rehearsing with their director and crew, contributing to the film's journey. "The prep for Ribbon has no fixed format, so we're all sharing our ideas and discussing the film. It's enriching!" he exults.

Sumeet, whose repertoire boasts of special appearances in films like Sridevi's English Vinglish, Kunal Khemu-starrer Guddu Ki Gun and Ajay Devgn's upcoming production, Parched, admits that despite being an actor for 16 years, it's only during the last three years that he's been recognised and appreciated for his work. "The response to the two seasons of Permanent Roommates was phenomenal and Tripling has been overwhelming to another level. It is endearing and scary too. I have now set the bar pretty high," Sumeet beams.

Sumeet Vyas and Nidhi Singh, lead actors of one of the highest-rated web series, trace their journey from small-town oblivion to global recognition
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; July 2, 2016)

Imagine a couple who were in a long distance relationship for three years, chose to skip a few face-offs and moved in together, got married and almost had a baby, all at the speed of Barry Allen racing through Star City in The Flash. Urban India will immediately picturise Mikesh and Tanya from The Viral Fever's (TVF) Permanent Roommates.

Directed by Sameer Saxena, the web series has aired successfully for two seasons with a third scheduled for 2017. Launched and created by TVF founder Arunabh Kumar, the show kicked off in 2014 and is currently the second most-watched long-form web series in the world, after Video Game High School. With 38 million views over two seasons, each episode boasting of a minimum of one million views, it is among IMDb's top 20 highest-rated shows of all time. But roomies, Sumeet Vyas, 33, and Nidhi Singh, 29, are still grounded despite all the sudden attention.

Born in Jodhpur, Sumeet moved to Mumbai when he was four years old. He dropped out of school before his 12th standard and started working at an editing studio, a job his writerfather, BM Vyas, got him. By the time he was 17, he was a pro at editing shorts, editing a few episodes for the soap Rishtey and cutting promos for music and countdown shows. "Then I saw my dad act for the first time. It was in play staged at Prithvi Theatre and I was so inspired that I decided right then that I wanted to become an actor," Sumeet reminisces.

Now, apart from being the face of the web series, he's also in Anurag Basu's series on Rabindranath Tagore, playing a leading role in Chokerbali. He's also written the mini-series Bang Baaja Baraat and done a lot of television. "I made a lot of money but playing an aadarsh beta in a saas-bahu saga made me sick. I did it to buy a house and a car but it was like working in a bank and I got fed up and quit," he reminisces, adding that he'd been a part of Nadira Babbar's theatre group, Ekjut, for six years where he met and fell in love with an aspiring actress, Shivani Tanksale, who has done special appearances in films like Shaitan, Inkaar and Happy Ending. They are married now and last month the couple was signed on to play a married couple in an ad for a leading dairy manufacturer, which has since gone viral too.

Acting is his bread and butter but he admits that for the first season of Permanent Roommates he got peanuts. "I got more money in Season 2 and when I was given a separate vanity van, I realised the perks of being a star," he laughs.

While Sumeet's fans invariably expect him to be funny and he sometimes cracks a lame joke so they are not disappointed, Nidhi's fans expect her to be serious and sober, like her on-screen avatar. "But I'm a lot like Mikesh in real life!" she acknowledges.

Born in Guwahati, she moved to Allahabad when she was two and then shifted to Mumbai when she was 16 to study BMM. At 22, she decided she'd like to be an ad-guru and went to work at a leading advertising agency. Two years into the job, she got an opportunity to freelance as an assistant director in films and simultaneously began to pursue theatre. "I was unsure about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be till the acting bug bit me," she reveals, adding that she had to go through several rounds of auditions before she signed her first commercial.

A year later, I auditioned for a show being created by Arunabh (Kumar, TVF) for MTV and a few months later, landed a role in TVF's first original web series - Permanent Roommates. "My parents had their inhibitions about me entering the business of cinema but now they are very supportive," she says.

Sumeet confides that his parents who live in Jodhpur would wonder why youngsters wanted to click selfies with him when he isn't even a popular face on TV. "It took me a while to explain to them that I appeared on a dedicated online channel but by then the show had moved to a mobile app and that was incomprehensible to them," he laughs.

Is the sudden rise in followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat exciting or intimidating, you wonder, and Nidhi, speaking from Barcelona where she's on a break, asserts that they are enjoying the adulation. Sumeet is quick to add that he doesn't think he's all that popular. "Being fangirled in cities is fun, but it's far more exciting when people in smaller towns recognize you. That's when I know I'm doing great work," he adds.

However, a lot has changed in the last four years with the TVF office moving from a shoe-box sized room in Aram Nagar to a sprawling office in Andheri East with separate cabins for the creators. "But Arunabh and his team still work from out of one of the smaller rooms. They have no ego, no starry tantrums. The more you work with them, the more you are in sync with their thought process and realise that the more money you can make, the better the work you can do," says Sumeet, who is beginning another web series that kicks off in Manali, and is also in the Leena Yadav film, Parched, which has been the toast of the festival circuit.

So what's coming up in Season 3? "Our writer Biswapati Sarkar, best known as 'Arnub' on Frankly Speaking with Arnub, is presently writing a feature film after which he will start on the second season of the another hit TVF original web series, Pitchers. So we are still wondering where Mikesh and Tanya are going next, but wherever it is it'll be somewhere interesting for sure," he promises.

Nidhi Singh and Sumeet Vyas, the lead pair of Permanent Roommates, talk scandalous web content and fame
Aastha Atray Banan (MID-DAY; March 6, 2016)

"It was when we were shooting the fifth episode of the first season that we realised it was big," says actor Sumeet Vyas, who plays the endearing Nikesh in the web series, Permanent Rommates. "We were all on the shoot, and the fourth episode had been uploaded the previous night. And, from midnight to morning, four lakh people watched it. That's when we knew this was massive." Since the first season, which was uploaded in 2015, the show has become the second largest watched web series in the world on YouTube, with each episode bagging more than a million views.

We are sitting with Vyas, 32, and the female lead of the show Nidhi Singh, 29, at the office of The Viral Fever, which created and produces the web series, currently in its second season. Singh is from Allahabad, and quit engineering to become an actor. Other than Permanent Roommates and her theatre performances, she is known for her viral videos, especially Shit Delhi Girls Say, where she pronounces Louis Vuitton the way it is spelt.

Vyas, born and brought up in Mumbai, joined Nadira Babbar's theatre group, Ekjut, in 2000 and worked with them for six years. It would make sense to know that the two leads for this show have roots in theatre. They bring to fore a characteristic that is important for the sucecss of a web series — believability.

The show, which is about the travails of a couple living in, relies on their chemistry — which Vyas and Singh have down pat. If they are great on screen as the loving yet different couple (Vyas playing the sweet, thoughtful boyfriend Nikesh, and Singh is the bratty, I-like-to-do-it-my-way girlfriend Tanya), that could be because they have great chemistry off screen too.

They laugh and joke as they let our photographer take pictures, exchanging gossip. "We gelled from the first meeting. I was in awe of him, when I was called to audition, as I knew his work in theatre and thought he was awesome. We are good friends in real life and react well to each other," says Singh, who plays pregnant in season 2. "And the writers write such great lines, we just have to perform our best," adds Vyas.

They are aware of the power of the medium, and the reach it has, but are clear when they say that they are not trying to make a statement with the show. "People have the wrong idea of what a web series is. Those who watch our show are like you and me, who have already watched Game of Thrones or blockbuster Bollywood or Hollywood movies. They want something different, and of good quality. And so, writing and acting has to be superlative," says Vyas. Singh has a different observation.

"People think if you make it bold, it will work. Our team has never said, 'oh let's make you say something scandalous to get views'. It's just about telling a good story. And, even though I am pregnant now and not married, we are not making a statement! And even when I say f***, I am not being 'bold', just normal," she smiles.

They may not be out there to make a statement, but they have built up a decent fan base thanks to their show, and are the hottest digital stars around. Both have fans who follow them on Facebook and Instagram, their favourite social networking tool. "It's so much easier than Twitter, where you have to think," says Vyas.

Singh screams, "It's not easy. You have to take a good picture. I have some fun followers, especially this really cute boy who comments on everything I put up. I often go and stalk my followers!" As they soak in the stardom, they have their eyes firmly on the prize — Bollywood. "That's the goal. Let's send out signals to the universe," grins Singh. Yes, let's.

Former IITian Arunabh Kumar now hopes to create India's answer to 'The Avengers,' and will roll with the second season of his hit web series 'Pitchers' early next year
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 28, 2015)


It was during his student days at IIT Kharagpur when Arunabh Kumar, Founder-CEO of The Viral Fever (TVF) and TVF Media Labs, realised that downloading and watching TV shows was the most essential part of every engineering student's campus life.

Unfortunately, not a single one of these shows was Indian, except for a desi connection forged by Kunal Nayyar's perennially nervous nerd Raj Koothrapalli on the wildly popular The Big Bang Theory.

"I had studied the students' TV viewing habits. Thanks to unimaginative Indian soaps and their unnecessary melodrama, an entire generation of audience, between the ages of 14 and 34, had completely missed out on Indian content because of sheer lack of it," Arunabh recalls.

One day, he hopped off a Tokyo-bound flight, ditching his cushy job as a research consultant, to work in production and as directors' assistant, exploring the short film format.

"But no one seemed to understand what I wanted to convey, I was either told that my content was too intellectual for television or I was asked to change my style. I decided to take a risk with content anyway," Arunabh says.

Last year, the company's first web series, Permanent Roommates, became the most watched online series in India and the second most watched long-form web series in the world, after Video Game High School, with over 9 million views for five episodes.

The first episode from the series is now all set to be screened at the 17th MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, partnered by Mumbai Mirror, at the Movie Mela, alongside AIB's Honest Indian Weddings and Kahaani director Sujoy Ghosh's short film Ahalya.

TVF's creative director Biswapati Sarkar, who is famous for parodying Arnab Goswami on the channel's satirical show 'Barely Speaking with Arnub', which has featured Bollywood A-listers like Shah Rukh Khan and Ranveer Singh, appears as a panelist at the Movie Mela at the festival, presented by Jio, alongside Badlapur actress Radhika Apte and Google India Head, Satya Raghavan.

Meanwhile, Arunabh is gearing up for a second season of the hit series and also plans to create another season for Pitchers, a more recent web-series by the company which aired on their independent online channel and was rated 9.6 on IMDB.

"Pitchers had initially started off as a mockumentary, to be filmed like the British TV show The Office. I also had an Indian Entourage in mind. Then, with India's start-up boom, I decided to create something closer to home," Arunabh reveals.

The five-episode series became so popular by August this year that it spawned a whole range of products with the show's tag line, 'Tu Beer Hai', merchandisers selling 50,000 t-shirts and over 500 different Pitchers-related memes surfacing online.

The series, revolving around the struggle of four young people who quit their jobs to start their own ventures, fetched over 7 million views on YouTube in three months and became the first Indian show to feature in IMDB's top 50 shows at rank 21, overtaking Seinfield, House of Cards, Narcos and Scrubs. "The audience at a summit I recently attended in New York was intrigued by the fact that I managed to outdo shows backed by TV network giants like ABC, CBS and FOX with a meagre budget. Also, I could keep the viewers hooked to a show with 40-minute-long episodes. I always say that if you give people the kind of content you want to see on television, they will watch it. The aim is to be the pioneers of web originals in India," Arunabh says.

A minion version of the show's poster featuring the four protagonists, played by Naveen Kasturia, Arunabh Kumar himself, Jitendra Kumar and Abhay Mahajan, has gone viral too.

"The show has managed to make stars out of nobodies, including me," Arunabh says, adding that he was at a restaurant recently when a group of boys seated at a nearby table sent over a beer. "I don't even like beer," he laughs.

He also recalls how he received e-mails from engineers who'd quit their jobs after watching the show to start their own business.

"I realised that with great power comes great responsibility and the content we put out there affects people," he reflects.

Pitchers was recently screened at the Microsoft office in Bangalore while some Goa fans of the show threw a 'Pitchers bash', where people got together for a marathon viewing of the show over beer.

Now, Arunabh is keen to explore dark humour and venture into films, but is in no hurry.

"By 2020, we will have created India's response to The Avengers. Our channel is already the desi whiplash to HBO," he chuckles.