The Viral Fever (TVF) has done many good things for the world of Indian web series, maybe the best thing they did out of them all was to introduce Jitendra Kumar to the Indian audience. The undisputed king of the Indian web series industry has delivered another massive hit with the second season of the much-acclaimed show Panchayat which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
Jitendra Kumar, who is a Civil Engineer from IIT Kharagpur, did what most engineers do, stay away from their engineering major in their profession. Civil engineering’s loss was art’s gain as he rose to become a star on Indian television.
The 31 years old Jitendra joined TVF nearly a decade back and since then, he has been riding one wave of success after another as he has become a household name through TVF’s realistic shows about Indian youth and their struggles.
Even though regular followers of Jitendra were familiar with his work on various TVF sketches which were uploaded on YouTube, his big break came on TVF’s massive hit Pitchers where he played a frustrated techie brilliantly. The show about 4 friends trying to launch a start-up was a huge success and Jitendra’s performance was one of the main reasons behind it. Anyone who has ever been stuck in a dead-end corporate job could relate to Jitendra’s situation, and let’s face it, most of us are stuck in a dead-end corporate job.
After the massive success of Pitchers, Jitendra kept appearing in TVF sketches regularly during the next few years. However, it took 4 years for him to deliver his next memorable performance. The endearing ‘Jeetu Bhaiyya’ of Kota Factory, a series based on the struggles of engineering aspirants in the education hub of Kota. A series that was supposed to highlight the students in the show, became more popular due to Jitendra, who played a Physics teacher on the show.
‘Jeetu Bhaiyya’ became an internet sensation as TVF delivered yet another mega-hit show. However, all the success of Pitchers and Kota Factory was going to pale in front of what was coming next, Panchayat. One of the most successful web series of all time in India, Panchayat has now delivered 2 successful seasons back to back.
Centered around Jitendra Kumar’s character ‘Abhishek Tripathi’, Panchayat takes you to rural India and makes you fall in love with it, as Jitendra does in the show.
While biggies like Netflix are burning money all over the place and wondering how to crack the Indian market, TVF has already shown it multiple times how to get it done. Take a simple story about real India, tell it effectively, put Jitendra Kumar at the center of it and you have a big hit.
With several big hits behind him, Jitendra Kumar has proven that he is the most bankable star today in the world of Indian web series. The combination of TVF’s writing staff and Jitendra’s acting has proved to be unstoppable so far, and long may it continue.
