From IIT-Delhi to Stand-Up Comedy: The Journey Of One of India's Favorite Engineer-Turned-MBA Stand Up Comic

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From IIT-Delhi to Stand-Up Comedy: The Journey Of One of India's Favorite Engineer-Turned-MBA Stand Up Comic

For any stand-up comedy lover, Amit Tandon is not an unknown name. But his journey to becoming one of India’s favorite comedians was not bereft of challenges. The engineer-turned-stand up comedian started out as a businessman but soon comedy became a serious business for him.

From Business to Stand-up Comedy

While pursuing his Mechanical Engineering and MBA from IIT Delhi, Tandon had set his goal on becoming an entrepreneur. Even though he was a creative nerd who wrote and directed plays and hosted college festivals, his love for business made him blatantly refuse job offers from big companies. He later went on to create his first venture with his three partners. However, it was a bumpy ride. The market crashed and the company had to be shut down leaving Amit with nothing more than business lessons.

As a result, he had to take up a corporate job but failed to sustain it for long. Undeterred by the hurdles, Tandon went on to establish his second venture, which was a recruitment firm. He said,

“I was already married with a kid and another one was on the way. It was an impossible time to start a venture, as my wife was not working since the last two-three years and I was the sole earning member.”

His hard work finally paid off as his second venture proved to be quite successful. Now with relatively more time at hand, Amit started looking for other avenues to vent out his creativity. This is when he turned to stand-up comedy and started doing open mic.

His exposure to facing the audience during his college fests at IIT Delhi, came in handy for him. Plus, he considered himself in a safe zone as he had his business to fall back upon. He said,

“After working the entire day in the office, when I garnered a few laughs in the night, it was empowering. I felt like a superman who has the power to make people smile and laugh.”

His experience of being a CEO and earlier an employee, added the relatability factor in his content. His ‘clean’ content resonated with Indian families. During his free time, he would interact with college students to make his content palatable for the younger generation as well.

The New Era of Stand-up Comedy in India

YouTube certainly proved to be a boon for stand-up comedy. It made stand-up comedians more accessible to people and spread their content far and wide. Amit said,

“In 2015, I realized that suddenly people around me were gaining better traction and mostly because they were releasing videos online. The biggest advantage that I had was my videos were really clean and so those could be shared in family groups.”

As the internet became more democratized, platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime opened plenty of opportunities for comics. In 2019, Amit Tandon debuted on Netflix with his act called 'Middle-Class Karma', as part of the 'Comedians Of The World' series. The act was a massive success.

Looking beyond Stand-up Comedy

Having done more than 1000 performances in India and abroad, Amit thoroughly enjoys writing apart from comedy. He has written for two shows on SonyLiv and looks forward to his new comedy series to be released on OTT.

On his personal front, Amit Tandon believes in spending a good amount of time with his children and creating great memories with his family. Having been an outstanding student himself, Tandon believes that children should not be pressured to get good grades as long as they pass and must be supported in whatever they love to do.