By Edha Singh
Oct 2018, every comedy fan in this country was in tears. Here’s how it started-
Eight years ago two comedians got together to start a podcast. This was Tanmay Bhatt and Gursimran Khamba starting the All India B*kchod. Soon they were joined by close friends Rohan Joshi and Ashish Shakya. At that time the two were writing for Vir Das but due to frequent appearances on the podcast, they were made a part of it. Together they officially founded the greatest comedy collective India has seen.
Together they started a youtube channel which featured comedic sketches and later some podcast episodes also. These videos were far ahead of their time, covering concepts like LGBTQ, honest criticism of Bollywood, political parties, media, and even rape. Mind you, I’m talking about 2013/14 when the word woke barely existed. A quick check through the comments of these videos will show you thousands of Indians who agreed that they represented a progressive group that India needed and misses now.
They became a hit with the Alia Bhat collaboration where they parodied Ishq Wala Love. Their Hotstar special On Air with AIB became a hit with their unforgettable theme song- ‘tragedy mein comedy’. If you are a fan of political comedy On Air with AIB is a must-watch. From here they grew exponentially and got into one of the boldest moves in Indian comedy- The AIB Knockout-Roast of Arjun Kapoor and Ranveer Singh. This 2014 roast featured Ranveer Sigh and Arjun Kapoor getting roasted by the top comedians of that time, including the AIB founders, with host Karan Johar. The comedians themselves were also heavily roasted. The audience included top Bollywood celebrities, critics, and the general public. This roast went on to become the biggest controversy there was with Mumbai Police involved in it for months. It faced backlash from right-winged politicians, certain activists and some of the general public. It was clear this sort of format came too soon for India and subsequently AIB put up a sketch on Net Neutrality.
This comedy collective just kept growing despite many controversies surrounding the company and its founder Tanmay Bhatt. It was apparent that throughout the process the youth was on their side and they went on to collaborate with celebrities like Kangana Ranaut, Irrfan Khan, Alia Bhatt.
These were sketches which called out issues with brutal honesty and layered wit. They will surely have you rolling with laughter if you haven’t seen them. Following this, a must watch are the Honest series which featured videos like Honest Engineering Students. The writing is masterful and the content is genuine. The actors featured in this video also went on to become common in AIB videos and famous in the comedy circuit. Alongside this, in December 2016 they were also working with Irrfan Khan on a web series which had to be called off due to health issues.
By 2017 AIB was doing excellently and had started working on the film Chintu ka Birthday, which was their first production. There was a complaint lodged that AIB was women-centric only out of convenience.
A hired social media writer Krupa Ghil had stated that they treated feminism as meme-worthy content. Ashish Shakya spoke out against this but acknowledged that if females in AIB faced an issue there would be an internal committee to deal with it. But despite this 2017-18 was a successful year with 9 crores in profit and over 40 employees. This event, though, did foreshadow what would happen on Oct 4th 2018.
AIB had become a huge company with writers, producers, directors and they often worked with freelancers, one of them being Utsav Chakraborthy. He was accused of impropriety by Mahima Kukreja as part of the Me Too movement. Rohan Joshi was the only one in the AIB office and didn’t think much of it as he was not working with them anymore. At that time and had to take down all the videos Utsav took part in. On further investigation, it was found that Tanmay Bhatt had dealt with the Utsav case in confidentiality leading to worsening conditions between Mahima and Utsav. They finally issued a statement apologising for the same-
“Sometime after Utsav had stopped being an AIB employee, Tanmay Bhat received specific, detailed allegations about him in a private and personal conversation. Tanmay confronted Utsav in a personal capacity – which led to Utsav calling the victim, leading to further harassment,” the 5 October 2018 statement read.
“We made a big mistake. We should have cut all ties immediately.”
Following things fell apart- On Air with AIB was cancelled mid-season, Tanmay Bhatt was removed as judge from Comicstaan season2, Khamba was removed as head of Gormint, (an Amazon Prime show coming up), they dropped out of MIAMI. All brands withdrew partnership from them and the company went into 36 lakhs worth of loss. On December 17th at Ashish Shakya's house they got the whole company together and announced the closure of AIB. Everyone present broke down and could not believe that it was actually over, previously no matter what controversy they had forged on. A Twitter statement was released saying that the Youtube channel is shut down for the foreseeable future. Tanmay Bhat was suspended as CEO. Their Instagram, Twitter and Facebook went silent for months. On 29th May 2019 they lifted the suspension of Tanmay Bhat and broke the silence by issuing the statement-
"The AIB YouTube channel is for all intents and purposes, dead for the foreseeable future - there will be no new sketches anytime soon," read the statement.
"To that end, we maintain that Tanmay Bhat's lapse of judgement regarding Utsav Chakraborty was egregious. As a result, even though, Tanmay Bhat's suspension has been lifted, he will no longer hold the position of CEO."
"The EC was unable to conclude the investigation on account of this withdrawal. Given these circumstances, Gursimran Khamba will no longer be involved in operations at AIB, and will be working independent of us," the company added.
For hitting 3.5 million on youtube all they said was-
“If and when we decide to release new content on the channel (e.g. stand-up clips), you will be the first to know.”
Currently, they continue promoting Chintu ka Birthday which released on 5th June 2020. The founders seem to have moved on, but technically three of them remain founders of AIB. Only the youtube channel is closed, the company continues to exist, so perhaps there’s hope for the future. Tanmay Bhatt has taken to streaming, running a youtube channel and stand-up comedy; Rohan Joshi released his Amazon special Wake n Bake (highly recommended by me) and has started his youtube channel; Ashish Shakya has started a newsletter again after many years and last heard of Khamba was that he was on a break with his family in Delhi, he seems to be busy writing. Whether or not these allegations were true is not for me to judge, but surely the consequences were larger than expected. They did not deserve to be shut down completely, they had a lot more to offer and the disappointment of every fan is paramount.
Out of Ten, I would give them 3 big controversies and 3.8 million hearts that they have won over and continue to do so.
*The tweets mentioned have been deleted from all handles and are not available anymore.
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