FUNNY BUSINESS
India’s comedians go corporate
Navin Prabhakar became a household name in 2005 when he appeared on The Great Indian Laughter Challenge
on television. Today he is among the standup comedians making a good living by making corporate executives and employees laugh.
Vikram Poddar was laid off by a consulting firm during the recession in 2009. Today, his company BoredRoom does everything from customer outreach to sales training, leadership development and employee engagement — all of it delivered with laughs.
Welcome to the world of standup comedians who are helping corporate staff beat stress and prepare to reach bigger and better targets.
Mr Prabhakar is a regular fixture at corporate gatherings of big names including Airtel, Vodafone and Batra Pharma. Mr Poddar and his team put smiles on faces at the likes of Urban Clap, Snapdeal, HCL, Aditya Birla Group, Khaitan, Godrej, Tata and Yes Bank.
Comedians have long been a popular draw at corporate events in Western countries, and the idea has now caught on in India. But the routines the funnymen perform are different from what they would offer in a show to a general audience.
“We do branding of products through comic acts. If I do my nine-minute-long Pehchaan Kaun (Identify Who?, based on a conversation between two women in a bar) routine, I add two more minutes to talk about the product of the company that engaged me,” Mr Prabhakar told Asia Focus.
He charges 250,000 rupees (US$3,460) per show in India and double that amount for a show abroad. Corporate bookings have not only brought him fame but also help keep his kitchen fires burning, he says. The versatile Mr Prabhakar, who performs in Hindi, English, Gujarati and Marathi languages, is also booked for 12 shows across Europe in May.
Rajeev Nigam, another standup comedian, performs regularly at annual meetings, dealer gatherings and product launches for clients including Asian Paints, Rotary Club and Anchor. He says comedy at corporate meetings has been in tremendous demand in recent years.
Mr Nigam who, like Mr Prabhakar emerged from The Great India Laughter Challenge, started in Lucknow but has been performing mainly in Mumbai for the last 20 years. He does hour-long shows while Mr Prabhakar keeps corporate employees entertained for up to two hours.
Another standup comedian, Nishant Tanwar, does shows for Maruti, Nokia and Vodafone. Sunil Pal, the winner of
The Great India Laughter Challenge in 2005, has also turned to doing standup comedy for corporate audiences.
But comedy for corporate employees is much different from public shows. For one, the artists avoid cracking vulgar jokes that might offend senior corporate employees. As well, their wardrobes are more formal and that involves more expense.
“I can’t repeat the same suit I wore in Bengaluru once my photographs appear on page 3 of a newspaper,” said Mr Prabhakar, who has done about 3,000 shows for corporate audiences.
One reason why standup comedians from television have turned toward corporate gigs is because TV has more or less said goodbye to the genre. Since 2017, there have been no television comedy shows in India. Observers blame a rise in censorship and a general lack of innovation. One of the few survivors is Kapil Sharma on the Sony channel, whose programme is more of a chat show with Bollywood celebrities.
But tough competition among standup comedians for corporate bookings is also leaving a few heartbroken. Aditya Navodit, who did a programme for business processing office employees of IndiGo airline with another standup artist in 2018, has taken a break from comedy and turned to journalism where the income is more stable.
“To get corporate shows, one should become viral or win a major show like Comicstan or Comedy Circus on the
“We do branding of products through comic acts. If I do my nine-minutelong Pehchaan Kaun routine, I add two more minutes to talk about the product of the company that engaged me”
NAVIN PRABHAKAR
internet,” Mr Navodit said. “Moreover, comedy requires constant practice and innovation. I am working with a website for a regular income.”
Two winners of the Amazon video programme Comicstan, Nishant Suri and Rahul Dua, are now part of the corporate comedy circuit.
The standup artists working for corporate audiences need to build an online profile, work for online media such as Netflix and hire a manager to negotiate with company executives.
Besides being good at drawing laughs, they also have to be good singers and mimics, and know a thing or two about corporate solutions. In mimicking too, the demand is for artists who can copy the current stars of Hindi cinema. “It’s not easy to mimic Nawazuddin Siddiqi and Irfan Khan, the two current popular stars,” Mr Prabhakar points out.
Initially, the idea of humour-based training did not have too many takers in the corporate world. But more companies started embracing it after feedback from their employees suggested there was a need to bring down the stress levels, explained Suraj Bahirwani, president and global sales head of Grasim Industries, part of Aditya Birla Group.
“The question was how to bring humour to the corporate world without diluting the message,” Mr Bahirwani said.