Arunabh Kumar

Some Lesser Known Facts About Arunabh Kumar

• Arunabh Kumar is the founder and former CEO of The Viral Fever (TVF). He is a web series director who created his own OTT channel and created plenty of shows that relate to real-life stories.

• He belonged to an average middle-class family who lived in Muzaffarpur. His parents were concerned about his education so they moved to 7 -8 cities in an effort to settle down. They finally settled in Jaipur and Arunabh went to Vidhyashram school which is known as one of the best schools in that city. ^[2]The Better India

• In 2006,  he began his first job as a Research Assistant with US Air Force at IIT Bombay and left this job after a few months. He talked about this experience in an interview and said,
  

  I think IIT is the time when I actually started getting this thing that there is something called films, movie making…and I started enjoying that. That would be the place where I discovered my drive and interest in it. So you can say that IIT is the time where I discovered that okay, this is an interesting field and I might want to do that. Then I also did a couple of internships, but I figured out that lets take the job. I took the US air force job because I was put in this subject called Image Processing, but I left it after six months only. ^[3]The Better India

• After leaving this job, he decided to work in the field of filmmaking. In 2017, he ended up joining Red Chillies Entertainment as an assistant director for the film Om Shanti Om.
  

  

  As an assistant director, his job responsibilities included taking care of everything including printing scripts, running around for routine tasks on set, and helping out in everything. He also made a short appearance in the film as a transgender.

  

  After this project, he struggled to find work. He tried to begin his career as a filmmaker but was deprived of new opportunities. He began shooting corporate films and small AVs for ad agencies and builders to make a living. That time around, he came up with the idea of working on his own TV show. He pitched the idea of a TV show about engineers named Engineer’s Diary to MTV but it was rejected by the channel on the grounds that no one would watch this kind of show. After this rejection, he decided to go online by leveraging the potential of Youtube. He talked about it in an interview and said,

  TVF didn’t really start from this rejection. TVF Media Labs was a company that I started for branded content production, and it was pretty established much before. It was started in 2010-11. Then, only when I had enough money to support myself, I thought of making my own TV show. So it’s a misconception that I started TVF because the show got rejected. I had TVF and I had enough money. In fact, TVF is not really a YouTube network, it’s a mother ship which I started. And after one and half years when I had enough money, that is when we intended to make some TV shows, which got rejected. And then I thought that maybe I should try and make my own show online. That’s how TVF online network came into existence. ^[4]The Better India

  TVF became a huge success and Arunabh marked his presence in his industry with his own channel. His popular shows like Yeh Meri Family, Gullak, and Kota Factory have been rated 9 plus by IMDb.

• In March 2017, he was in news for all the wrong reasons. That month, an anonymous post was published by a woman on Medium with the title, “The Indian Uber- That is TVF”. The writer of this post accused Arunabh of sexually harassing her when she worked at TVF sometime around 2014 to 2016. After this almost 50 more women stepped forward and accused him of sexual harassment. An FIR was filed against Arunabh on 17 March based on a third-party complaint filed by a Mumbai lawyer. On 29 March, he was booked by Mumbai police after another woman filed a molestation complaint against him; this was followed by another complaint. ^[5]NDTV

• Arunabh was serving as TVF’s CEO, and these events impacted TVF’s image which was unacceptable to investors. On 16 June 2017, he stepped down from the position of CEO and handed over the leadership to Dhawal Gusain. ^[6]NDTV

• In 2019, Arunabh co-founded Indusverse with Saumin Patel and Alok Sharma. He operates as the CEO of this company that brings up comic books that raise social issues. ^[7]The Indian Express

• Arunabh got married to Shruti Ranjan on 24 May 2022, in a private ceremony surrounded by their close relatives and friends. ^[8]The Indian Express
  

  

  Their wedding was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic. They met for the first time met in 2013 when Shruti was pursuing her Masters in Environmental Science at IIT Bombay. They dated each other for a long time and finally got engaged in April 2020. ^[9]IWM Buzz Arunabh helped her find her passion for photography, and she loves to do it in her free time.

• In May 2022, the second season of his award-winning show Panchayat was released on Amazon Prime, which got an overwhelming response and became a huge success. ^[10]ScoopWhoop