Five teenage 'machans' trying to liven up Chennai’s stand-up comedy scene

CHENNAI: There are always two sides to a stand-up comedy act. While the creator and the comedian are on one end, the audience is at the other. Bringing the two together in comedy shows in Chennai is The Machans Entertainment — an event management startup based in the city.
The youngsters have helmed two successful shows by two famous stand-up comedians – Atul Khatri and Zakir Khan.
After the immensely successful “Live Atul Khatri” show in September last year, the group conducted the “Zakir Khan Live” at the Music Academy on Sunday. As it happened in the case of “Live Atul Khatri,” tickets had been sold out for “Zakir Khan Live,” as well. Both the shows witnessed an attendance of over 1,200.
While there might not be anything novel in an event management group conducting these comedy shows, what’s interesting is that The Machans Entertainment is a group of five teenagers — Naval Chand, Vishvesh Davey, Sabarish Hari, Bharat Agrawal and Prathik Jain — who are pulling off such shows on a large scale.
Stand-up comedian Atul Khatri was so much in awe to learn that his show was hosted by five 19-year-olds that he appreciated the youngsters’ efforts on social media.
“After the show, we went out for dinner with Khatri. It was then that he learnt about us. He was stunned that we conducted the show. He soon had social media posts acknowledging our group. It was fantastic,” Naval told TOI.
In an era where young entrepreneurs are mushrooming all over the place, these five friends are setting the bar quite high both intellectually and manually. They were quick to notice that unlike Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi where there is a vibrant stand-up comedy scene, Chennai is just warming up to the culture. In order to tap the growing market, they decided to take the plunge, forming a company in May last year.
“We saw that comedy shows were happening but there were no proper organised efforts. Only a few big companies were conducting them. But that was also happening few and far between. In fact, when we went to a college fest last year, we saw how crazy students were for a comedian who has his following mainly for a Hindi-speaking audience. So we did a bit of research and found that there is indeed a market which can be tapped. So we began our journey. Our target audience is 15-35 but we have seen people over 50 years of age coming and enjoying the show,” Naval said.
However, things were not easy to start with as the group didn’t have any formal knowledge of managing events. They took the challenges head on and faced the difficulties with courage.
“We were absolutely greenhorns… We didn’t even know the basic necessities like what lights should be used on stage, how many sound boxes we will need, etc. Then we had to contact the stand-up comedian through his manager. We had to organise an opening act before the main show. It was a mammoth task. But we never lost courage. We learnt everything on the job. From talking to the manager to fixing the ticket rates to getting the auditorium and the lights and sound boxes, we did everything on our own. What also aided us is the internet. We found out everything on the web. Then we delegated the work to our five friends… While a few things might have gone wrong initially, things fell into place eventually,” said Sabarish.
The youngsters are pursuing their college degrees. While Vishesh, Naval and Sabarish are doing B Com, Bharat and Prathik are into engineering.
“We began from scratch and we know that we have achieved something. But we are keeping our feet grounded. See, starting out as entrepreneurs from such young age will help us in the future and we do want to keep honing our entrepreneurial skills but not at the cost of studies. We are balancing and giving equal attention to both. What is also helping us is the trust we have in each other’s abilities. We know each other back from school days and are a tightly-knit group,” said Naval.
It is probably this close friendship which has reflected in the group’s name as well. In informal Tamil, ‘Machans’ means dude. “In local culture, we address close friends or cousins as Machans… So we went with The Machans Entertainment so that people can relate to us. They can feel a sense of belonging,” Naval said.
For any startup, the funding is important and the teenagers got the financial backing from their parents. “We have got the best set of parents. They not only supported us in our endeavour but also gave us financial support. It was crucial initially. In fact, when the Khatri show ended, we were called on to the stage and the audience gave us a round of applause. Our parents had tears of joy. We felt proud and it was perhaps our biggest achievement. It encouraged us to continue on this journey,” said Prathik.