#SabQtiyapaHai!!

21 February, 2012 was the day when we at The Viral Fever, started making Qtiyapa videos!! I have been part of the Qtiyapa spirit from the beginning… Our very first video Rowdies was the first breakout video we had with people beginning to connect with us. They started to know that there are some folks making Qtiyapa videos.

Yesterday, as we celebrated our 6^th Qtiyapa Day, the joy within the team was immense. The day means a lot to all of us. Also, on the D-day, we got the good news of TVF’s Bachelors being nominated at the News 18 Reel Awards, along with other big series like Lakhon Main Ek, BOSE: Dead / Alive and Pushpavalli. Right now, Bachelors is the highest voted on the platform, and we are really happy about this achievement.

So Yes, Qtiyapa means everything to us!! So what is Qtiyapa? It’s simple. It is a twisted way of doing a particular thing. If you can hold your ear with a straight hand, but you prefer to hold the ear by twisting your arm from behind the head, that is nothing but Qtiyapa!!

We have done a lot of Qtiyapa videos and people have loved them and have showered us with love. After we started out, there emerged lot of players who started creating content on the YouTube.

Also, TVF’s #SabQtiyapaHai comes with the strong belief that irrespective of the situation and premise you are in, you can create your own Qtiyapa moment. The situation might be serious or light, the thought is that you can discover / initiate / create a Qtiyapa Moment, and that Qtiyapa exists everywhere.

Six years down the lane, we at TVF still remember our very first milestone video which was Rowdies. Nobody had thought that anyone could spoof a reality show. This format created a breakout moment for us. After that, Deepak Sir, who plays Raghu in the video, got massively viral. He went to colleges, and that is when lot of students liked our work. This is how a thick bond of understanding was created between the masses and TVF.

After that came the video, Bollywood Aam Aadmi Party, the Qtiyapa on Arnab Goswami. This is when everyone got to know of us, and realized that YouTube can actually be a platform for great content.

The next milestones I would say, were our web-series, the first being Permanent Roommates, which was literally the first web-series of India. Later, Pitchers came which was a big game-changer in terms of the boom that the web platform created. Before this phase, many were not interested in learning more on the web platform. There was a huge ambiguity factor, but the boom that Pitchers created was enormous. And today, we know how many OTT players are there in the market making web-series. I would call these few milestone achievements as the ‘big moments’ of TVF.

Talking about Bachelors, this is TVF’s one series that was actually based on Qtiyapa. Yes, being the Director of this hugely popular series, I am gratified. Where people fear ghosts, we made a pilot for Bachelors wherein the ghosts feared the bachelors. This gave us 9 million views and is the 3^rd most viewed video of TVF. This was actually a genre parody.

After this, we decided to make it into a five-part web show. The first of it was a parody on the famous movie, Lagaan. The idea was to take the cult Bollywood movie and convert it into a Bachelors show, and the challenge before us was to interpret the problems of Bachelors with the movie Lagaan. The Season 1 as you all know, got a good response.

But the response and feedback that Season 2 of Bachelors garnered has been humongous. It has given us more than 25 millionviews and to tell you, it only released last December and January 2018.

For all those who are wondering about the next Season of Bachelors, here is the answer. Of course, the next season will give you more of Qtiyapa. We will try to experiment more in the coming season. In Season 2, we actually had an episode which had a genre parody which was of the Zombie film. In the next, we will try to do more parodies on genres, from Bollywood, Hollywood and other cinemas.

On the plans ahead, well, the market has really grown now. We have many big players like Netflix, Amazon, ALTBalaji etc who work on their own content. The competition is tight; hence there is a need to focus on newer stuff. We don’t want to limit ourselves just to humour. We would like to explore other genres as well, like drama, crime drama, horror. Also, work on our first feature film will happen!

We have had viewers enjoying our various Qtiyapa moments for six years now. Our newest trend on Twitter, #SabQtiyapaHai has received a great feedback. We have been asking our fans to come out with that first Qtiyapa moment in their lives. We have lot of people sharing their moments… All is going pretty well…

So Happy Qtiyapa to you all!! Remember #SabQtiyapaHai!!

(As told to Srividya Rajesh)