'We want a batch of competitors'

Only Much Louder’s YouTube Comedy Hunt held a press conference where AIB members and YouTube stars Rohan Joshi and Gursimran Khamba as well as Kanan Gill and Biswa Kalyan Rath, famous for their Pretentious Movie Reviews series on YouTube were present.

This is India’s first web hunt to find the next comedy stars on YouTube. “It’ll be like a reality show minus the drama and sad back story and the tears” said Joshi from AIB. The final 40 participants or the ‘#super40’, as they have been named, have been selected. In the next seven weeks leading comedy creators such as All India Bakchod, Kanan Gill and Biswa Kalyan Rath, SnG Comedy, East India Comedy, Jose Covaco, Abish Mathew, Aditi Mittal and Shudh Desi Endings will mentor the top 40 shortlisted participants and work with them to help sharpen their skills.

In the seven-week long competition, they will be given thematic challenges and there will be eliminations too. “Everybody has a style of making videos so we didn’t want to give them very structure-based challenges which will limit them. It’s easier for someone to make vlogs and for someone it is easier to make spoofs. So the challenge will be theme based,” said Joshi.
Talking about the selection procedure of these 40 participants, Gill said, “We were not looking forward for high definition quality and refined editing skills in the entries, we were looking for potential.” There was a concern for the untapped potential in the YouTube community in India. “There were 100 comedians on YouTube when we started, and there still are about 150 which means it’s still an essentially large WhatsApp group,” joked Khamba. Many YouTubers will emerge and thrive was something that was expected by all these big YouTube names but that didn’t happen as such.

“Best case scenario, we’ll have a batch of competitors after this series launches,”said Gill. On questions regarding the insecurity in them in prospect of new competition Biswa said, “It’s very hard to hate someone who is funny.”  Vineet Sehgal the chief marketing officer of Quikr said “Our company is driven by innovation, it is purely consumer generated and is a digital platform. I believe comedy gets the point across in a very compelling way.”

“You don’t have to be a big production house and own big money to be a big voice on it. Plus, it is a platform where you can say things that you can’t on TV,” said Joshi. The fact that 60 per cent of the entries in this show are from first-time content makers , it shows that there is a need to create the opportunity and a platform for people.”