Boredom during the pandemic-induced lockdowns led content creators to go live so that they feel less alone, as they watch movies, lap up reality TV and even do their nails
Balraj Singh Ghai, founder of the performance venue, The Habitat, and his lawyer wife Chandni Ghai, began livestreaming on Twitch during the pandemic. Chandni says she became hooked to it, when she was pregnant. Pic/Satej Shinde
You might experience conflicting emotions—and at the same time—when watching reality shows like Bigg Boss and Lock Upp. Irritation, amusement, shock, and of course, the hilarity of it all. That said, experiencing a potboiler alone on your couch can be no fun. Prashant Singh realised this quite early on. But the Jharkhand-based software engineer didn’t have the bandwidth. Singh, known as BeastStats online, was already quite a hit for his geeky curation—three years ago, he published a bar graph on YouTube, which depicted the total screentime of all the superheroes in Avengers’ Infinity War and Endgame. When the pandemic hit, there was suddenly ample time to experiment. “I began by playing online chess with [comedian] Samay Raina.” The repartee and banter between the two, made watching chess unusually funny. “It was Samay who then suggested that I start streaming my own content.”
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That’s how Singh landed up on Twitch, an interactive service dedicated for livestreaming content that spans gaming, music, entertainment, and sports. Today, a quick search on the Internet about the best Indian Twitch streamers has BeastStats right up there. With 16.9K followers, Singh provides content that’s known to be a laugh riot. That all of it is livestreamed means his one-liners are spontaneous, unscripted, and of course, unedited. Though gaming streamers have existed for a while—Ajey Nagar alias CarryMinati being among the more popular—livestreaming has evolved, with the routine and banal drawing in an audience.
“I livestream while I watch reality shows, sharing my reactions in the form of running commentary. I also do it when I am bored, and play antakshari or games,” he says. “Sometimes I livestream when having dinner, just chatting with the audience. It’s fun, because someone is always watching you, and wants to talk to you. You are never really alone.” This one time, when he ran out of content, he did “a foot review”. “It was not even planned. I showed my foot on the screen, and explained why I had ‘the best foot’. The next thing I know, people started sending me photos of their feet, and there I was rating them,” he laughs.
During the lockdown, BeastStats remembers spending nearly eight to 10 hours streaming live. Now, he does it once back home from the office. “But I still show up every day, regardless of my mood. Or my followers may get worried.”
Prashant Singh alias BeastStats
The idea, says Singh, is to have fun. Balraj Singh Ghai, founder of the performance venue, The Habitat, and his lawyer wife Chandni Ghai says it’s this fun that saw them through two years of the pandemic. In fact, Chandni who became a mother in May this year, went into labour while livestreaming. Ghai and his wife, got on to the VoIP and instant messaging platform, Discord, early on in the pandemic, joining his comedian friends, chatting live, and cracking jokes. The duo slowly began building a fan-following of their own. “It’s a sweet community of people, who want to listen to you, and they know that we want to chat with them as well,” Ghai says. Soon, the couple began to receive invitations from fellow streamers, many of them friends, to join them live. “We would also receive Instagram DMs from our followers, requesting that we join a particular livestreamers’ session,” recalls Chandni. Ghai and Chandni were often seen on BeasStats’ livestreams, where they’d together “react” to popular reality shows. This motivated them to transition to Twitch. When Chandni got pregnant last year, she stopped going to work. “I had all the time in the world, and would stream all day,” she smiles. They started by launching individual channels, but then decided to stream from Ghai’s handle, @BalrajGhai. “Most afternoons I would watch a movie live, and Balraj would join sometime later... together, we would comment and react on everything under the sun, responding to chats. Once we did a food tier list. This one time, Tanmay Bhatt streamed our live on his YouTube handle. And we got a lot of his followers as well. That’s how we kept growing organically.” The streams would go on till 4 am sometimes, as a heavily pregnant Chandni struggled with sleep. In May, when she abruptly had to end a stream, after she experienced pain, and had to be rushed to the hospital, the audience got worried. A few days later, Ghai streamed from the hospital to assure them that all was well.
Mumbai-based digital content creator Vanshaj Mehta, 19, who livestreams on YouTube, says his journey began with making tech tutorials. “In 2020, I finally found a genre for myself... I’d make commentary streams, reacting to other videos and calling out other streamers,” he says. Mehta doesn’t discount the fact that livestreaming is hard. “When you are recording, I can afford to take a break after a few minutes... In livestreaming, there are no retakes. You have to maintain the same energy throughout, because there are people watching you continuously. Sometimes, it can go on for hours.”
Ecommerce livestreamer Deena Pinto says her followers on the Moj app send her ‘mints’ for her streams, which can be converted to cash
Beyond the validation, livestreaming also brings in money. Ecommerce livestreamer Deena Pinto, who goes by the handle @skinnygirldiariez, started as a lifestyle blogger, before being recruited by online retail giants like Amazon, to livestream. She livestreams on an in-house app, very often post midnight, reviewing the outfits and beauty products available on the store. “If they buy the product, I receive a commission too.” While many joining Pinto’s livestream are genuine shoppers, there are trolls, who fortunately, she says, are now being monitored through the app. Apart from ecommerce retail, Pinto also streams about ‘random things’ on her personal account on the Moj app. “I have livestreamed myself painting my nails,” she says, “And while I am at it, I also chit-chat with people. It could be as silly as the weather, but it’s always fun.” On Moj, viewers who enjoy watching her, send her virtual gifts—called mints—during the livestream. “I’ve received a lot of mints, which can be converted to cash, and deposited into my bank account. Sometimes, I might be livestreaming for just 15 minutes, and I may make Rs 1,000-Rs 2,000. This makes it beneficial for me to stream more.”
Digital content creator Vanshaj Mehta, 19, says livestreaming can be challenging, when the creator is not having fun. “You have to maintain the same energy throughout,” he says
Both Mehta and Singh want to eventually make the transition to IRL (In Real Life) livestreaming—a type of live streaming that allows viewers to see their favourite streamers in real-life settings outside of their desktop streams. “At this point, it’s sit-down streams that everyone’s lapping up. This genre [IRL livestream] is not being explored in India as much yet,” says Mehta. What’s holding him back to making the transition, he says, is the lack of gear—you need a GoPro, compressor, and Internet connectivity. “Currently, that kind of connectivity is only available in Mumbai or a few other metros.” Recently, Mehta watched an IRL livestream of a foreign national who was visiting Mumbai for the first time, and was exploring the city’s streets. “I didn’t even know this person, but I watched him for hours together. What I liked was how unpredictable it was. He had no idea whom he would meet next, and what he’d find on the other side of the street.”
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