The internet has inevitably changed numerous lives and brought out the hidden talents and abilities of so many people throughout the years. One of these is the exceptional story of a creative young man from Dombivli, Nikunj Lotia, the CEO of the YouTube channel – Be YouNick and a popular sketch comedian. His channel crossed the 1 million subscriber mark in the January of 2018 and currently has about a crowd of 2.2 million+ subscribers (as of Oct’2018 and counting) who consume his content on a regular basis.
NIKUNJ LOTIA aka BeYouNick – BIO| WIKI
FULL NAME – NIKUNJ LOTIA
DATE OF BIRTH- 29TH NOVEMBER, 1989
PLACE OF BIRTH– MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA
NATIONALITY- INDIAN
ETHNICITY- GUJARATI
COLLEGE – SIR J.J SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, MUMBAI, INDIA.
CURRENT PROFESSION – FULL TIME YOUTUBER
DEBUT – YOUTUBE: 2014
EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION- BACHELORS OF ARCHITECTURE
NIKUNJ LOTIA LIFE STORY| MOTIVATIONAL STORY OF BeYouNick CEO’s WALK TO FAME
EARLY LIFE
Nikunj had a pretty much uneventful and normal childhood like the most of us. He wasn’t much of the center of attention during his school days. He would rather be one of the backbenchers sitting with his friends and pulling random pranks and stupid jokes on each other. That was his thing. In college life, though, he started recording short fun videos along with his friends just for the sake of it. Therein was where he discovered his love for this craft leading onto a collection of a 169+ videos on his channel today.
He would record these videos in his free time on his cell phone and upload them on his channel every week, religiously. Later, he borrowed a tripod from one of his friends and then recorded videos by mounting it on the refrigerator. From there onwards it’s been a long and interesting journey for the 28 year old comic sensation.
JOURNEY FROM THE LIFE OF A BAR-TENDER TO A YOUTUBER | THE STRUGGLING PHASE
From bar-tending to being a wedding planner to working in a call center just to fend for his expenses, this guy has seen it all. He has also done a degree in hotel management and while he was doing that, he came into bar-tending to pay for his college expenses. He recalls in one of his interviews how watching a Tom Cruise movie inspired him to get into bar-tending. Guess the movie! Cocktail it is. There was also a time when he ran off to Goa for a year and spent the time there freelancing and doing the job of a wedding planner for a short time.
After these interesting adventures when Nick (his nick name) returned home, he had lost all contacts and was quite without a job and no money. He had to depend on his parents and brother for a while to support him. He even did odd jobs and worked at a call center for a short time, all the while recording and uploading videos on his channel.
THE BREAKTHROUGH
Then came his big breakthrough moment when his spoof of an add on the cricket World Cup went viral all over social media. The video garnered eyeballs as well as launched his channel into the limelight. His hard work was finally being recognized. He remembers that moment as being an overwhelming one and feeling quite numb when it happened.
“The first time ‘Mauka’ became viral, it was quite overwhelming. Me and my then editor spent almost 4 continuous hours sitting in front of the screen and seeing the number of views go up from 10k. We went numb. Thats’s what we felt.”
The channel’s unique name has also been a source of motivation for him. Given to him by a friend, Nick immediately loved how the name resonated with the name of his favourite YouTube channel-‘Life According To Jimmy’, and also had his name in it. He always wanted to do something like that channel and wanted to live that life himself. That was his dream come true moment.
ACHIEVEMENTS
“Before ‘Mauka’ happened, many companies wanted to hire me as a channel under them/content creator/ writer, but i refused all of them. ‘
He always wanted to get that feeling through his own work and ‘Mauka’ surely gave him that. After that video went viral, it was about 3 years ago, he still had garnered only about 3-4 lakhs of subscribers. That gained him fame and recognition, true, but he still wasn’t making any money. So he had to resort to the bar-tending job again and he recalls that it was embarrassing at times when people would be asking him for selfies while he was serving them drinks behind the counter.
But then with the Internet boom and increased access, situations improved and he now has a mass of 2.2 million loyal fans on his channel, with increasing number of views and subscribers every single day.
Many people don’t know the fact that Nikunj had a YouTube channel called Not So Funny before he started BeYouNick. But the channel didn’t work out very well so he had to move on from it. Today, he has had collaborations on numerous videos with popular channels such as MostlySane and other artists like Mumbiker Nikhil, Ashish Chanchalani.
WORK ETHICS | THOUGHTS ON LIFE AND PLANNING | CURRENT LIFE
He has a dedicated team of 6 members who are also very good friends of his. One of the interesting and characteristic thing about Nikunj’s videos is that they always contain a positive message at the end of it, wrapped up in his twisted and comic sense of humor. He also admits to being not very much of a planner when it comes to life or the ideas for new videos. He likes to keep it cool and just go with the flow. He admits to always having been ‘the class clown’ and his life’s journey of 28 years as being the motivation behind his cracking sense of humor.
Nick believes that watching other’s content can either get you inspired to make similar works or irritate you because it’s not what you like. That is why, he confesses to not having watched other’s videos since 2 years. That’s how dedicated he is to keeping the content original and real.
Nick believes in not having any Plan B in life though. He does whatever he does with his entire focus and 100% dedication. He prefers living in the present moment and knows how so many people sideline their dreams to balance it out with a job they don’t even want to do. He says he’s currently a full time YouTuber and happy with life as it is.
OTHER VIRAL VIDEOS
- ‘WE ALL HAVE THAT ONE FRIEND Feat. Ashish Chanchlani’
- ‘THE JOB INTERVIEW’
- ‘THE MASS BUNK’
- ‘THE BRO CODE SERIES’
QUIRKS
Nikunj has as interesting choices as his personality when it comes to his personal life too. His favourite food being Vada Pao and his all time favourite actor being Govinda. He would choose Bollywood over Hollywood any given day and swears on Narcos being a must watch Netflix series. His favourite singer is Lucky Ali.
And also, all you people waiting to know his relationship status, despite rumours of alleged affairs with actress and model Rashmi Rajput, there have been no confirmations on his side. So he might as well be single. *wink wink* 😉