Well, this was my first time attending YouTube FanFest in Mumbai. So naturally, I was super excited. YouTube Fanfest 2016 was held last week at the National Sports Club of India, Worli. The event was HUGE this year with a 30 artist line-up. Superwoman (Lily Singh), AIB (All India Bakchod), SNG Comedy, Being Indian, Kanan and Biswa, Connor Franta, Arjun Coomaraswamy etc
The outside area of the fest was literally like a carnival with stalls by Pepsi, Pantene, Clean & Clear and food stalls as well. There was a red carpet area with photos of all the YouTube stars. I couldn’t wait to step in!
Being a blogger, I got access to the private lounge for drinks & snacks before the fest started. Overall, definitely quite an impressive infrastructure.
And THEN the show started!
There were close to 6000 people at the fest this year. The host of the evening – Abish Mathew was simply unapologetic and engaged the audience with his sharp humour.
To be very honest, I wasn’t familiar with all the YouTube stars like Rickshwali, Kaushal, Hydrebad diaries, Viva etc… and frankly, a lot of them were downright boring.
But there were of course the ones who truly impressed with their performances. A few names to mention would be SNG Comedy, Put Chutney – these are comedy groups who churn out some hilarious videos and I urge you to subscribe to their channels. But the ones who stole my heart was Sanam, an indie-Bollywood band. Yes, how cool is that? Mind you this was the first time I heard the band and I am A FAN! They were definitely the best musical staging for the evening, nailing the show with the songs like ‘Gulabi Aankhen’ and ‘Mere Mehboob Qayamat Hogi’.
In terms of comedy acts, the guys at AIB stole the show. Hilarious as ever, their comical act on ‘A look at life in the age of internet celebrity’ was outstandingly entertaining. Take a look –
Kanan & Biswa collaborated with Connor Franta for an act – Okay, so I knew Connor is a huge internet celebrity but what was amazing & amusing was to see young 16-17 year old girls literally crying upon seeing him! He does have some diehard fans in Mumbai.
Of course a special mention goes to Lily Singh – her performance was absolutely high on energy!! And if you guys follow on her on her vlog, you’d know actually how sick she was when she landed in India and on the day of the performance. She gave her a performance in high fever & completely nailed it. Well, there’s a reason why they call her superwoman!
So yeah, that pretty much summed up my experience at the YouTube Fanfest 2016. I really wished however some of the acts were longer – this includes AIB, Kanan-Biswa & SNG Comedy’s acts. So instead of getting so many celebs, MAYBE they could’ve just focused on a few good ones. And oh hello team at YouTube, there was no freaking network at NSCI – I wasn’t able to post live tweets or Instagram pics because of the lack of network. How can you be at a YouTube fanfest and not have access to YouTube or internet in general ?!
But I think this has been a problem across all major festivals – I attended the Sula Fest 2016 last month and as much as I LOVED the entire fest, there was no network at all. Speaking of Sula Music Festival, it was again a first time for me & I was really impressed – the music, the fringe activities, tarot reading, the wine, food & wine pairing, the grape stomping, the shopping & the food.. and I like the fact how these festivals are focusing so much more on the fringe activities. It’s definitely a trend that’s picking up. Leaving you guys with a few photos of the same.
xoxo,
Ritwika
