Tanmay Bhat


Tanmay Bhat is an Indian YouTuber, stand-up comedian, script writer, performer, producer, and co-founder of the creative agency All India Bakchod along with Gursimranjeet Singh Khamba.
He was one of the first four comedians to be featured at the Comedy Store Mumbai's first all-Indian comedian line up, titled Local, and soon thereafter he performed alongside comedians from Nepal in Stand Up event.
In 2018, he was a judge on Comicstaan, a stand-up comedy competition broadcast on TV.
In mid 2019, he started the YouTube channel "Tanmay Bhat" where he posts vlogs, comedy sketches, and video essays, and streams games such as Free Fire, PUBG Mobile and other horror games with other Youtubers. He also runs the YouTube channel "Honestly by Tanmay Bhat" where he shares videos on personal finance, comedy writing and Chess live streams, among other things.
He has been featured in Forbes as 'Richest Celebrity of the Year 2016'. He has worked in many stand-up comedy shows and was part of Weirdass Comedy founded by Vir Das.

Career

TV Writing

Tanmay Bhat had his writing debut with UTV Bindass' flagship show, "Hass Ley India". From there, he went on to write for MTV India's 'Wassup', and Nachle Ve with Saroj Khan. He ventured into story screenplay and dialogue writing for Disney India's daily comedies Kya Mast Hai Life, and NDTV Imagine's Oye! It's Friday! with Farhan Akhtar.
He was also the writer and producer for "India's Got More Talent", a subsidiary comedy show spawning from India's Got Talent.
Bhat has also scripted TV award shows including the prestigious Filmfare Awards, Star Parivaar Awards, Balaji Awards, Big TV Awards and Stardust Awards.

All India Bakchod

All India Bakchod, as a YouTube channel, was co-founded in 2013 by Tanmay Bhat, Gursimran Khamba, Rohan Joshi and Ashish Shakya As a comedy company they filmed sketches, performed stand-up comedy and co-wrote shows. By early 2015, the comedy group became a creative agency, making branded content for corporate clients. AIB's first foray into YouTube consisted of short spoofs and mimicry-based sketches. Song parodies continued to feature in their work, along with stereotypical situations, and plays on heavy nostalgia. They popularized a satirical trope, "Honest Indian...", which they applied to various situations. Their podcast guests, and work collaborators, included numerous Bollywood celebrities, global and Indian comedians and filmmakers.
Between 2015 and 2018 they hired and contracted multiple writers to work on branded content. During this period, the four original members, with a writing team, created a satirical web television show called On Air With AIB, produced by Only Much Louder. This show ran on Hotstar for three seasons, with some shorter segments uploaded on the AIB YouTube channel along with branded content. In 2016, they launched film-making workshop First Draft. By September 2018, they had 40 employees working as writers and producers.
In April 2015, AIB released a call to action video which urged viewers to email their member of parliament to support net-neutrality. It was a successful campaign, generating momentum that led to upholding of net neutrality. In February 2017, they made a video asking people to vote in the BMC Mumbai elections.
AIB also produced a political satire webseries, Gormint, for Amazon Prime Video, and a comedy-drama movie, Chintu Ka Birthday, that was premiered on ZEE5 on 5 June, 2020.

Controversies

In December 2014, AIB performed and filmed the All India Bakchod Knockout, at the NSCI Dome in Worli, bringing the Comedy roast format to Indian audiences. Karan Johar was the host with roasters AIB, Rajeev Masand, Raghu Ram, Aditi Mittal and Abish Matthew. Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor were roasted. The show was uploaded on YouTube and subsequently removed from its channel because of public backlash. Multiple Bollywood celebrities expressed both their displeasure at the content and positive support in favour of artistic freedom, sparking a debate on right to expression in India.
In May 2016, Bhat uploaded a Snapchat video mimicking Sachin Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar, with them arguing about who is a better player. The video generated heated controversy over their portrayal, which some deemed offensive and appalling, while others found it to be hilarious and witty.
In October 2018, during the Me Too movement, writer and comedian Mahima Kukreja accused YouTuber Utsav Chakraborty, a freelancer with AIB, of sending her and other women lewd messages and photos via social messaging apps. At the time, Bhat was the CEO of AIB, and was accused of inaction over the allegations. However, over a series of tweets posted in November 2019, Utsav Chakraborty established that he had shared consent and familiarity with Mahima. He shared two audio clips where Chakraborty could be heard listening to Kukreja and her lawyer-sister threatening him with legal action, as Chakraborty planned to provide evidence that would disprove her accounts of the incident. Chakraborty also denied all allegations of sending unsolicited lewd pictures. His claims were legitimized by two more girls who accepted that no unsolicited lewd messages were indeed sent, and prior consent and communication had been established. One accuser then apologised to Utsav before deleting her account.

YouTube Career

Bhat returned to YouTube in November 2019, streaming Pubg. He claimed PewDiePie to be his inspiration as a person who's at a place in life "where he’s independent, regardless of what Wall Street Journal says about him, or any other publication, his people are with him forever no matter what he does. He went from gaming to becoming an overall personality. He is an inspiration in the model he created." Bhat reached one million subscribers by May 10, 2020. He also launched a second channel, 'Honestly by Tanmay Bhat' where he hosts 'learning streams' and videos with experts in Personal finance, Screenwriting, Neuroscience, Philosophy and more.
Bhat claims that during most of 2019, he used to play PUBG for six hours everyday, and also watch CarryMinati's streams. He thought it would be fun to stream with Carry, "just hit him up" and they started streaming together. Bhat believes that people watch streams for the personality. Loneliness has increased because of hyperconnectivity, and they get attached to online personalities.

Raising Money for Causes

Tanmay Bhat teamed up with Youtuber Saiman Says and brought in several comedians, including Sorabh Pant, Ajey Nagar and Kaneez Surka, together for the TreeMathon 2020 live stream. The stream presented jointly by Streamathon and Treesena was an 8-hour live session with personalities taking turns to try their hand at the game Getting Over It. The goal was to support the Mission Green Mumbai and raise funds to plant as many trees as possible in response to the deforestation drive at Aarey Milk Colony. The stream was a huge success and managed to rake in 5000 USD in overall donations.
On the second weekend of April 2020, Bhat teamed up with Kaneez to host an 8-hour live-streamed for two days, raising over Rs 17 lakh for charities fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. Raking in over 1.5 million views, the stream saw Bhat moderating multiplayer online games with fellow comedians Rohan Joshi, Kaneez Surka, Bhuvam Bam, Anuvab Pal, Varun Grover and Kusha Kapila joining in from their respective homes. The outcome decidedly exceeded Bhat’s expectations as they raised over 25000 USD.

Filmography