Cover Story: The Art of the 30-second Comedy with Niharika NM

I first came across Niharika NM half-a-decade ago. Unlike the vertical videos we are used to seeing her in, I recall watching the then-rookie content creator on a landscaped YouTube, where she focused her content around topics almost every teen or 20-something could relate to. There was something for everyone – from a scathing commentary on the types of people at birthday parties to laments about dumb things people do in horror films. Her content felt familiar and close to home, especially for long-term fans of Canadian-Indian YouTuber Lilly Singh, who’ve watched her present the most quintessential tales of growing up brown. Was she aspiring to be India’s very own Lilly Singh? The two creators might be cut from the same comedic cloth, but Niharika NM holds her own as a one-of-a-kind Gen Z goofball.

Engineering her own dream career

Every success story begins with realizing you’ve boarded the wrong train of life. For Niharika, her road to becoming one of India’s trailblazing digital content creators began when she found herself at sea during college; “It all started in the second year of engineering when I realized that I wanted to do anything but engineering,” Niharika tells Rolling Stone India. “So, I picked up a camera, called it a hobby and called myself a YouTuber.” 

A mismatched degree aside, Niharika had always been a performer at heart. Before broadcasting her content on the Internet, the 25-year-old went the old-school way, entertaining her family and friends in person. “All my life, my family and friends were the audiences to all of my performances that they never asked for. I just had way too much energy to expend, until I realized I could do that on the internet which could provide me a platform to potentially connect with a larger audience.” She continues, “What started out as a hobby and something that I did almost ironically slowly became something that I felt really passionate about.”

Considering the demanding nature of an engineering coursework and the tedious creative regime that goes into creating content, balancing her life was the very first challenge Niharika encountered; “I had a deal with my parents wherein they only let me create content as long as I got good grades.”  NM had to engineer her life in a way that it did justice to both academics and content. “I had no social life because I was either in my room studying or in the same room making comedy sketches, but I don’t remember ever regretting that choice either,” she confesses.

But then came the trolls – not just the anonymous bots on the Internet but the kind that mock your efforts in real life. The young creator realized that backhanded comments were an inescapable evil. “Nobody took me seriously. I don’t think I took myself seriously either. I had people passing comments mocking me, making fun of me, ironically quoting my videos, whispering my name as I walked by, staring, glaring, laughing at me…” she recounts.

“But it’s also mostly the same people that now send me the ‘I’m so proud of you! Always knew you’d make it!’ messages so, hah, boo you, Pooja!” Niharika jokes, confessing she doesn’t really know someone that goes by the name Pooja. “I’ve always been an extremely sensitive person but in college, I went through a phase where I truly did not care about people’s opinions, which fortunately coincided with my content creation phase that is the sole reason I did not melt into a pool of tears every time someone had a backhanded comment to make.”

“Also, have you seen me get angry?” Niharika rhetorically asks, hinting at her videos. “Who’d want to mess with that anyway?”

“I make videos about things that pique my interest, and I create. The word ‘influencer’ knocks out the passion for me and makes it seem too corporate.”

“I don’t take hate personally”

There’s a fine line between constructive criticism and hate – a distinction she recognizes. “Criticism is always welcome and appreciated. I’m here to learn, grow, and evolve with my audience,” she explains. “Tough love isn’t something I’m new to, it’s my family’s love language. As far as hate is concerned, I don’t take it personally or seriously.” Describing the Internet as a place she’s “grown up” on, Niharika elucidates why trolls don’t take up any space in her life. “Hate is something you do when you’re new to this whole world of content creation. After a point you stop caring. Also, honestly why should everyone like me? I don’t like everyone either,” she declares. “I can’t be everybody’s cup of tea and that’s normal – I’m fully okay with it. Also, after what we’ve all been through the last couple of years, and also in the grand scheme of things, who even cares what anybody has to say?”

While her fame catapulted on Instagram Reels, Niharika’s journey essentially began on YouTube in 2016. For the past seven months, she has been sharing short-format content via YouTube Shorts with her 1.84 million subscribers. Does she miss her long-form videos, though? “I have been thinking about getting back in the YouTube game for a while now, but I just want to figure out what type of long format excites me now before I jump into it. Hopefully, I’ll figure it out soon because I truly do miss the magic of long format content and how creatively stimulated it made me feel.”

Shorter content, higher goals

Niharika was a household name in Bengaluru long before she shot to global fame. The creator was handpicked to be a part of YouTube’s Creators for Change mentorship initiative not once but twice, was a regular at the youth festival Under 25 Summit, attended the Bengaluru leg of the YouTube Fanfest and was generally quite the buzz on the college circuit.

In 2019, just a few months shy of the pandemic, Niharika moved to Los Angeles to pursue her MBA and in May 2020, she uploaded her first short-format content on Instagram. Since that day, she has been an unstoppable force, writing a success story many content creators dream of owning. To put things into perspective, her first viral Instagram video, Living Alone 101, crossed 11 million views in under 13 days.

Currently, Niharika’s Instagram – with over 2.1 million followers – is a reflection of the life she lives and the people she crosses paths with. Her desi wit combined with mastery over the mundane have led to a machinery of videos that serve as a daily source of comfort and laughter. Her idiosyncratic twist to the videos, courtesy of Bengaluru colloquialisms, are a delightful bonus. The southern flavor is everywhere from expressions and plot twists to punch lines.

Is there a secret to her burgeoning fan following? Call it kismet, the fruits of her labor or an innate understanding of the digital landscape, but making the move from long to short format at the right time has inarguably contributed to her success. “I’d like to say yes, but there definitely was a learning curve. When I made videos on YouTube they would be 10 minutes long with a minimum of eight separate scenes, whereas on Instagram each of those eight scenes could probably be a video on its own.”

She adds, “As a student who was also doing content on the side, short form felt like a blessing and also served as a creative outlet that required less than half the production time of the long-form content that I used to make. Also, given how short this generation’s attention span is, I’m glad I made the switch to short form when I did.”

The other big contributor to her growth has been consistency, no doubt. “I don’t think I’ve ever created content daily because I’ve been a student the entire time that I’ve been a content creator, but yet short-format content did require me to be way more consistent than I was with the long-format content created in the past.” Over the last three months, Niharika has posted several collab videos with box office superstars such as Ranbir Kapoor, Kartik Aaryan, Dulquer Salmaan and Mahesh Babu.

Given the audience’s insatiable appetite for content and the pressure to keep creating to beat Instagram’s notorious algorithm, Niharika confesses to feeling the brunt of creative exhaustion, “It can last a couple of hours, days or sometimes even weeks.” If trolls were the first evil she conquered, content fatigue was the next evil she had to armor herself against. “However, in times like those, I’ve learned to just step back, walk away, do other things, come back, try again, repeat. It can feel terrifying to ‘step back’ sometimes when you’re overwhelmed and that’s exactly when you need to do it and it has somehow always seemed to end up working for me.”

The numbers game can be learnt

When you have a million-plus following, it is tempting to create foolproof content that you know will not disappoint the audiences. “There have been times where I’ve contemplated making content that I know would ‘work’ but wasn’t something I truly enjoyed or was necessarily proud of, and I’ve realized that it is impossible for me to put something out there with my name on it if it’s not something I’m proud of, or excited about. Pandering to an audience might be a good thing in terms of numbers, but it’s better when you create something you’re truly excited about and find an audience that shares that excitement with you. I always choose the latter.”

Every Reel on Niharika’s Instagram boasts at least a million views. Even her earlier videos and snippets are in the 50,000-plus-views range, with the lowest one garnering 69,000 views. Currently, the most popular Reel on her page is the one starring actors Mahesh Babu and Sesh Adivi, with over 32 million views (nearly 15 times her audience). “I don’t think I’ve fully processed it even today,” she describes her experience with viral success. “I went from 100,000 to one million in two months during the lockdown and my team and I couldn’t believe what was happening.” 

The view from the top 

From experiencing meteoric success online, creating content with her idols and walking the red carpet at Cannes, Niharika is living her dream, or is it yet to come? “It’s definitely a milestone that’s yet to come,” she says, adding, “I am, however, incredibly grateful for what I have now because I didn’t even picture in my wildest dreams my life to be what it is today. Although I may have several milestones, I just want to truly be present and enjoy this exciting, unpredictable journey and see where it takes me.”

The pandemic years have been especially crucial. “Honestly, if you told 2015 Niharika anything that I’ve experienced in the past two years, she would call you a liar and laugh at you, but would also internally freak out and screech very ungracefully. Debuting at Cannes and winning the Youth Icon Award, or getting my childhood idols like Mahesh Babu and other incredible stars to make their Internet debut with me, 2015 Niharika would never believe it until she experienced it,” she says. A lot of the credit goes to her loyal online audience for cheering her on along the way. “I’m just so incredibly grateful to have an audience that gives me love for doing what I love doing.”

Over the last two years, Niharika secured roughly 11 awards and titles that can largely be split into two categories – one which recognizes her for content creation and the other that celebrates her influence. In today’s world, many often use ‘content creator’ and ‘influencer’ synonymously. While content creators do have the power to influence, not all influencers depend on content creation for their bread and butter. Given Niharika’s digital dominance and the fact that she was the sole creator to be chosen as the global ambassador for Creators twice, the 25-year-old fits both bills, yet resonates with only one title. “I think Niharika the ‘creator’ resonates more with who I am and what I do. The term ‘influencer’ makes me feel almost uncomfortable for some reason.” What she says next raises a valid question on the definition of the term ‘influencer.’ “I make videos about things that pique my interest, and I create. The word ‘’influencer’ knocks out the passion for me and makes it seem too corporate.”

“I would like to say I’m a mysterious, unpredictable human being but I’m exactly what you’d think I’d be like for the most part. I’m obviously not as aggressive as I am in my videos, but my overall energy is pretty much the same.”

Niharika NM

“Don’t just follow trends, set them.”

“Never say never, yeah,” Niharika laughs when posed with the question of the possibility of turning her knack for comedy and writing into a script for a feature film or a book. “I do see myself moving towards potentially writing more fiction than just observational or relatable stuff, but that’s all talk until I actually do it, so we’ll revisit it then.” Until then, she has chartered a road map that allows her to switch between different creative lanes: “The plan, however, does exist to explore different creative avenues just to challenge myself and to see if I discover other things that might creatively stimulate me. I get bored really fast, so I always need something to keep it exciting for me.”

Looking back at Niharika’s career highlights the dynamism of the media and entertainment landscape. Five or even 10 years ago, YouTube was everyone’s go-to platform for videos and entertainment. Today, Instagram and TikTok would be everyone’s favorite destinations to either unwind, find out the next trending song or learn something new in under 60 seconds. Niharika was smart to make the move to short-format content at the right time, a shift that can only come from understanding your audience and current consumption trends. While the shift was definitely scary and presented itself with a steep learning curve, she plans on chasing the thrill of the unknown for years to come: “As much as that [evolving with the trend] scares me, it also helps me push myself out of my comfort zone, and allows me to reinvent myself while staying true to myself. It can seem terrifying on some days but I absolutely love how dynamic it is on most days.” 

In an industry that’s constantly evolving, you require the support of a close group of friends or family who’ve got your back during times of uncertainty. In Niharika’s case, her managers take this crown. “I trust my managers because they’re also my best friends at this point and they’ve been by my side through it all. I’m very picky when it comes to people that I let into my life, so most of the people that I trust are from outside the industry and have been my friends forever. But I’m also extremely close to a few amazing human beings who are from the industry as well.”

Staying true to her journey and mantra, her advice to upcoming creators highlights the power of passion and persistence. “Don’t just follow trends, set them. Do it for the passion, the numbers will come. No matter how many times you convince yourself that you should probably give up, don’t. Oh, and most importantly, don’t forget to have the most fun.”

Niharika is currently shuttling between LA and Mumbai, and intends on “living out of a suitcase for the foreseeable future.” She does, however, want to build a solid home base: “I do want to have a proper home base at some point, but that point however is definitely not right now. “

When she’s in Bengaluru, she barely moves from her home. No force, not even Bengaluru’s gorgeous weather, the comfort of a scrumptious bowl of Corner House’s famous ice-cream sundae, Death by Chocolate, or even biryani can lure Niharika to leave her family and dogs. Okay, maybe a plate of piping hot biryani might just do the trick. ” I am such a homebody,” she confesses. ” I just love spending time at home with my family, my dogs, and my friends. However, on the off chance that you do see me outside, it’ll probably be at any place that serves biryani and I’ll be stuffing my face with it.” No one is immune to the flavorsome kick of biryani, not even one of India’s fastest-growing content creators on Instagram. 

Once the cameras are shut down, the makeup is wiped away and the lights are switched off, Niharika is, well, exactly like her on-camera persona. “I would like to say I’m a mysterious, unpredictable human being but I’m exactly what you’d think I’d be like for the most part. I’m obviously not as aggressive as I am in my videos, but my overall energy is pretty much the same. What you probably won’t expect me to be is overly sensitive, which I definitely am, so make me cry at your own risk,” she laughs.