We spend most of our profit on biryani

While most of their ilk spend time on projects, pulling all stops to score grades and secure a cushy job, the team of NYK, comprising students pursuing final year in MSc Electronic Media at Anna University’s CEG campus, moonlights as digital media entertainers.

Speaking about how it all started, 21-year-old Deepan, who shoots the political satire videos made by NYK, says, “We did a video during the jallikattu protests earlier this year. However, the views were restricted to a very small section that had our friends and their acquaintances.

We took a break and focused on studies. Later, in May when we had a semester break, we planned to give our passion another shot.” With the support of Temple Monkeys channel, they created NYK. They started making political satire videos which struck a chord with the viewers that their subscribers went up to 60,000 from 100 in a little over a month’s time. But why the name NYK? Bibian Nishanth, who is an aspiring actor and the editor of the channel, says, “We’ve all seen that one student in class who is always against the overall sentiment and sides with the teacher.

He is often asked, Nee Yaruda Komali? So, it is because of the popularity and relatability of this line that it became our name.” The team has made videos like Life After Engineering, Reasons for Being Single and Bus Travel Atrocities among others.

The team has earned quite a bit of popularity over time.

“The other day, a kid, who must’ve been 10 or 11 years old, recognised us at a park. He said he enjoys our work and to our surprise, he even shared a link to his own channel,” says Jayanth, one of the actors in the team.

How do they decide upon content? “We jot down all the concepts in our ‘Brahma Pusthakam’ - the book of content). Brain storming is important. We are also constantly looking for what people are talking about, what’s affecting them, be it price rise or politics or corruption,” adds Dinakaran, another actor.

The team adds that with more and more YouTube channels emerging every now and then, the competition is high. “It is also about who addresses an issue first, and how. Content is king at the end of the day,” adds scriptwriter Madhan.

They have faced their share of backlash too. “An individual threatened to file a law suit against us. We were trembling literally but pulled ourselves together and spoke to the person and sorted it out. He is our best friend and a ‘friendly criticiser’ now,” muses director Bhoumik.

Managing college and the channel must be quite a challenge.

“It’s not that we go to college regularly,” they say in unison. Speaking about how lucrative the field is, Jayanth says, “We earn a considerable amount of profit out of NYK. But half the time we spend it at restaurants hogging on biryani. We are ‘Briyani Bhakthas’ (One of their most viewed videos).”

For the nonce though, Bibian, says, “We have ready content for the next six months and we plan to start a new online series. It is in progress. This series will be different from the existing ones and we assure the audience that they will love it.”