Samay Raina: Beyond the controversies

Brut India

Who is Samay Raina? Brut journalist, Vaishnavi, takes you through his journey, from comedy to controversy.

Transcript

00:00He gained fame for his dark sense of humour and sharp-witted rose.

00:05I have a lot of chill.

00:06Now that chill manifests sometimes in dark comedy, sometimes in edgy.

00:09Despite his show India's Got Latent landing in legal trouble for dark humour,

00:13he saw a rise in his followers, growing by lakhs.

00:16Comedy is not coming from any disrespect.

00:19It's just coming from showing another angle to something.

00:22Hailing from Jammu, Samar Raina was born in 1997 into a Kashmiri Pandit family.

00:27He said he grew up in Hyderabad because his parents,

00:30who were forced to live their home during the 1990s exodus of Kashmiri Hindus,

00:34eventually settled there.

00:35Raina's father was a journalist while his mother was a homemaker.

00:39It was his school where he said he developed a sense of humour.

00:42He was often bullied, especially because of his skin colour.

00:52A group of students would pick on him, calling him names such as

00:58To fit in with the other students of the school,

01:00he said he did multiple things, including learning the local language, Telugu,

01:04hoping that that would end the bullying.

01:06But it didn't stop.

01:07He said when everything failed, he turned to humour.

01:27He became friends with those who were junior to him because

01:35He believed cracking jokes was the best way to make friends.

01:38He would add his funny spin to popular stories like Supandi, Akbar Birbal,

01:42Laugh to Challenge, and even Google Jokes, just to have something funny to say.

01:46And he began seeing things change.

01:53He found a friend in 11th grade who had his back.

01:56With that support, he started gaining confidence.

01:58The schoolboy who was too scared to defend himself,

02:01suddenly schooled people during debates.

02:03By the time he reached college, he said nothing scared him anymore,

02:07as he had already heard the worst things about himself in school.

02:14He did printing engineering from Pune,

02:16which involved design and production of printed materials such as newspapers and books.

02:21But later, he called it a waste of time as he found his true calling for comedy

02:25after performing at open mics.

02:32His talent soon earned him opportunities to open shows

02:35for comedians such as Anirban Dasgupta and Abhishek Upmanyu in Pune.

02:39As his popularity grew,

02:41Raina made the decision to move to Mumbai,

02:44where he pursued standard comedy full-time

02:46and performed in multiple cities across India.

02:49In 2019, he participated in the second season

02:52of the Indian standard comedy series Comicstan

02:55and became a joint winner alongside Akash Gupta.

03:04Apart from comedy, Samay was a chess enthusiast.

03:07He started on Chess.com, competing with top international Twitch streamers

03:11and during the COVID lockdown, shifted to live-streaming chess on YouTube,

03:15collaborating with professional chess players,

03:18other standard comedians and celebrities.

03:23He attracted new chess fans by adding humour to the game.

03:29While many were hooked on his dark humour,

03:31others found it deeply offensive.

03:33His sense of humour often landed him in the midst of controversy.

03:37In 2022, he joked about a two-month-old child's life-threatening medical condition

03:41and the 16 crore rupees injection that was required to save the infant's life.

03:49While he didn't face any legal issues,

03:51he faced a lot of backlash on social media.

03:53That same year, he was called out for making a joke on abortion.

03:57He tweeted that once he wrote a joke on his girlfriend

04:00but she didn't end up liking it and asked him to remove it.

04:03And to this, he said that if someday he would want his girlfriend to get an abortion,

04:07then she should not come and say, my body, my choice.

04:11Despite the controversies, he continued gaining fame.

04:14Two years later, in June 2024,

04:16in a controversial roast on Ashish Solanki's podcast,

04:19he made jokes on actor Kusha Kapila's marriage, divorce and her sex life.

04:28Kusha labelled his jokes, dehumanising.

04:31That same month, he started a show on YouTube named India's Got Latent

04:35and described it as an unnecessary reality show.

04:38It featured people from across India who showcased their talent in 90 seconds.

04:42A panel of judges rated the performances and the winner used to get a cash prize.

04:47The show often featured judges who were celebrities, YouTubers and singers

04:51and they interacted with the performers.

04:53During the course of the show, the judges were known to roast the performers

04:57and sometimes even other guests.

04:59But as the show's popularity grew due to the dark comedy,

05:02so did the scrutiny.

05:03One of the episodes of India's Got Latent featuring YouTuber Ranveer Alabadia

05:07had snowballed into prime time discussions.

05:17If something like this happens, then it should be investigated.

05:20Samay Raina got into legal trouble for the use of abusive language,

05:23promoting obscenity and engaging in sexually explicit and vulgar discussion.

05:28While many criticised him for his show,

05:30others defended him, saying filing an FIR was too much.

05:41The comedian then deleted all episodes of India's Got Latent from YouTube,

05:45saying, everything that is happening has been too much for me to handle.

05:49Samay Raina had more than 10 million followers across all the social media platforms.

05:54Before the India's Got Latent controversy,

05:56his channels gained 10,000 to 20,000 followers per day in February 2025.

06:01His net worth was estimated to be around 140 crores.

06:05However, the Economic Times suggested that it could also reach up to 195 crore rupees.

06:09As per first post, his show India's Got Latent was estimated to earn around 1.5 crore per month from YouTube memberships.

06:16After Ranveer Alabadia's episode on 10th February,

06:19he gained over 89,000 followers on Instagram in three days,

06:23reaching 1.34 lakh by 13th February.

06:26His YouTube channel also grew rapidly, adding 80,000 subscribers on 10th February,

06:31followed by 30,000 and 20,000 on the next two days.

06:35Prachi Dubele, co-founder of Mumbai-based marketing agency Blue Rays Media Wars said,

06:40Samay's audience is more niche, consisting primarily of comedy lovers who appreciate his humour and relatability.

06:46This community, driven by shared values, stayed loyal and rallied around him despite the controversy,

06:52resulting in an increase in followers.

06:55Samay Raina's sense of humour not only gained him a lot of fans,

06:58but also opened a debate about where the lines should be drawn in comedy.

07:05It's my zone of comedy.

07:07Sometimes I make mistakes.

07:09I'm not a perfect human being. Nobody is.

07:11So I just learn and improve myself.

07:13Everyone has their own line and everyone should be okay with the consequences that you have to get with the line.

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