From locking himself in a hotel room and crying for days to handling trolls; Faisal Shaikh aka Mr. Faisu talks about his controversies, struggles and more

Faisal Shaikh aka Mr. Faisu’s inspiring rags to riches story is known to all. In a recent podcast with Maniesh Paul, the reality TV personality and social media influencer addressed all the controversies he got mired into, his struggle days of creating content and a lot more.

7 years back, the way I struggled in my life, I never thought that my life was going to take a turn like this. Life has changed a lot. I used to wake up at 7 am to go to college. I would come back at 11 to open the shop and stay there till 9pm. I would attend night classes and then go to the gym. I would get 6-7 hrs of sleep. I had this routine for around 4 years.

Social media is such a deep world. I never imagined that people would like me so much. I just worked behind creating content. I never ran behind numbers. Me and my friend, we would create transition videos back then. People from our college noticed us. And I loved it. Then another platform (Tiktok, which is now banned) came, my work was getting noticed. In one day, I would shoot 14-15 videos, because I wanted to be seen.

I had a small phone and my friend had a touch screen phone. I saw a few videos where people were posting lipsyncing videos of actors on dubsmash. I asked if I could do so too and did a lip sync video of Salman Khan’s dialogue. It felt like I am Salman Khan. I wanted to do more and my friend taught me a few tips and tricks of lip sync. Slowly, I started getting more views and my videos were going viral. I was doing it for fun but I kept doing my work. Slowly, other platforms came up and I was getting to do promotional videos. I started promoting brands.

I was working at a perfume store. It was evening time and a beautiful customer entered. I held her hand to spray it on her hand and then waved it a bit to test the fragrance. That’s how it is done. I looked at her and got so nervous, the bottle fell from my hand. It was of Rs 14,000. It was my 2nd or 3rd day at work and all the girls got to know that I broke such an expensive bottle. I went to the store the next day to inform the manager and they said they will deduct it from two months of my salary. I worked there for two months and left. Now I have a brand of myself. I launched it on my birthday and got a Rs 1 crore pre-order.

The work was demanding and the pay was too little. So at 21, I got a job as a salesman on Linking Road. For ₹50 a day, I spent 9 hours in the heat and threw myself at passersby to buy clothes. I would sell jeans, tops for Rs 50. I would make Rs 10 per customer I would send inside the shop.

I remember the door of our house was the only piece that looked rich. My dad got it from a junk dealer shop. I felt if I use the door as a backdrop, people will think I come from a rich background. (laughs) I would somehow set up hanging somewhere to fix the light and the background and create videos. My mom thought I was wasting my time.

My dad used to work hard a lot. He had to make around 400 dresses, which needed to be shipped all over India. So after a tiring day, he would come home and see me fidgeting with my phone and laughing, he would get very angry. He would tell me to work on something good. But after putting your heart and soul into it, it shows and your parents also see it. I started getting around Rs 400-500 from social media. Once I accumulated around Rs 50,000 and gave it to my parents and they finally believed in me. They just wanted to feel that I am not wasting my time. That feeling of people knowing me, recognizing me is just unmatched.

Faisal Shaikh had around 32M followers on the now banned video platform TikTok. His account was banned after he came under the scanner for allegedly "glorifying" acid attacks in a video. The ban was enforced "due to multiple community guidelines violations". Reacting to the same, he said, “I was the third person all over with so many followers. I was in London at that time. My music video was on the global chart. I got a call and was told that the account is not there. I couldn’t figure it out and was very upset that my ID was not available. I went on another social media platform to connect with my fans. I didn’t make any mistakes and I was misconstrued. I was in London to support India for a match that was going on. I was alone and for 2-3 days I just cried in my hotel room. I was also scared.

My only aspiration right now is to do a film… someday. I am ready for it. I have to groom myself a bit more. I have shown myself as a dancer. I never thought I would reach the finale in the reality shows (Khatron Ke Khiladi, Jhalak Dikhhlaa Jaa). I have been an aam aadmi. I just want that way I have smoothly sailed, people following me, their journeys should also be a smooth sailing one.

During Covid time, something happened and I got gaalis through mail. Social media community was quite heated up and I got trolled badly. I felt like locking myself up and crying. I prepared myself strong enough to withstand all the negativity. In another controversy, I stopped getting brands. I was stressed but I fought back.