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