Arunabh Kumar, the man behind The Viral Fever, talks to Sharang Bhaskaran about failure, censorship and his plans to venture into feature films
Remember Yogi from TVF PitchersIJ One of the four friends who quit their jobs to develop their own start-upIJ Yes, that’s him. Yogendra Kumar Pandey, aka Yogi, is none other than Qtiyapa Guy himself – Arunabh Kumar, an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur who went on to start a popular online entertainment network, The Viral Fever. Acting in TVFPitchers as brilliantly as co-writing the series, Arunabh, founder and creative experiment officer of The Viral Fever Media labs, has created a new favourite hangout for young Indians on the internet. Kumar was in town for the ‘Signature Masterclass’ series of talks on the theme ‘Passion to Paycheck’ and we got a chance to talk to him about his pre-TVF days, web programming, censorship and much more.
If there’s someone who can take a masterclass on this subject, it is him. When asked how he got to be involved with the Masterclass series, Kumar said, “I had seen the Masterclass with Cyrus Sahukar and Anurag Kashyap and I thought I would love to be a part of it. It was honour for me to share the same platform as some of my own personal inspirations.”
That Kumar is an engineer by profession and was working with the US Air Force before he gave it all up to follow his passion is known to all us. But what we wanted to know was about his days before he became the successful entrepreneur that he is today. “In 2009, I had won a short film competition and had a feature film contract. It was called Padhoge likhoge Banoge Nawab and had won a lot of awards and a production company told me they’ll make the film so I started working on it. That’s the time I met Anurag Kashyap and showed him what I had written and told him about the film. He’s a really nice guy and would talk to anyone who showed up at his door. So he explained the business to me and gave me the harsh truth, which was really good and I appreciated it,” he recalled. The film however, did not happen and Kumar eventually moved on to create more short length content. “Once the film did not happen, I said to myself, just chuck it and I went on to make corporate films and branded content,” he added.
like any other successful entrepreneur, Kumar, too, faced his fair share of failures and rejections. Not many people know that Kumar was once turned down by MTV when he took his show Engineer’s Diary to the channel. “At the time when I pitched the show to MTV, I was not quite on the right path. 2009-10 was pretty tough for me. like they say, when you look back on the past, you have a good 20-20 vision, and that makes the future clearer,” he revealed. “I had some money with me then and I decided to start my own production company and came up with the name Viral Fever,” he added. Kumar shared an interesting anecdote behind the name of the company and its origin. “I was looking for a name that was suited for web-based content and I thought of Viral Fever. But when I was searching for a domain name for the website, it turned out there was already a viralfever.com. I was so disappointed that I even asked the guys who owned the website if I could use the name. But then after a few days, an idea struck me and I added ‘the’ to it and that’s how we became The Viral Fever. TVF has a distinct sound to it. Sirf VF me maza nahi aata fir,” he added.
When asked if he still fancies the idea of venturing into feature films, he answered enthusiastically, “Yes, of course. TVF is a media production company and we are working on developing stories for the feature format. We definitely want to explore that area, too.” With their online series like TVF Pitchers, Permanent Roommates and Chai-Sutta Chronicles, The Viral Fever has pushed the envelope in digital content and have gone on to create a niche for themselves in the domain of web-based programming. These shows are not only some of the most watched shows online in India, but have gained popularity among Indians residing in other parts of the world, too.
On the recent controversy over Udta Punjab and the Censor Board’s attempts at heavily censoring the film, we asked him where he stands on the issue. “From a storyteller’s point of view, a certain degree of censorship should be allowed. But I think if you’re trying to challenge and suggest 90 cuts in a film, they don’t realise that the story is instrumental to what they are trying to say. And this kind of stupidity is what makes this country full of retards. Some of these leaders need special care,” Kumar remarked.