Offline With an Internet Star: A Day in the Life of MostlySane

What does it take to be in the A-league of comedy content creators in India?
You have to choose one non-conventional job and then switch to another, that’s exactly how it worked out for Prajakta Koli aka MostlySane.

Born and raised in Thane near Mumbai city, Prajakta was very fond of listening to the radio in her childhood. Just like every other kid in their school days, Prajakta also had whacky choices for her career which she would change every now and then although it was in 6th grade when she decided that she wants to be a radio jockey and she pretty much stuck to it.

I was only good at languages and my only talent in life was that I can speak. I’ve grown up listening to the radio and I used to wait for the radio jockey to come and speak. I was like, this is a great job. You sit and you talk, you talk whatever you want, then you listen to songs and you talk again. This is what I want to do.

Prajakta on being a radio jockey

Sometimes, the most perfectly planned out plans don’t work out and this was also the case for Prajakta once she had entered the radio industry. She worked as an intern for almost a year and then she was given her own show, this was it, Prajakta had achieved her dream but once she had it in her hand, she realised that it was not for her. Prajakta was running a night show which was not getting a good response and she was eventually asked to stop and someone replaced her. Prajakta also realised that she was not meant for this.

I left because I couldn’t do it. I was a very bad radio jockey. So, I had just started to believe that when they called me and told me that “your show is not working, you will not do the show from now on, stick to producing only and this ‘xyz’ person will be doing your show from tomorrow.”

Prajakta Koli

YouTube was new in the market and Indian audiences were just getting introduced to the platform, not everyone knew the potential of this medium. One of the few people who knew that this thing will blow up in the future was Sudeep Lahiri from One digital Entertainment.

This is also the time when Prajakta was nearly done with radio and was looking for alternative solutions for her future. Sudeep had approached her with an offer to try YouTube videos, initially Prajakta resisted but eventually started doing these videos as a side hustle. She started doing videos from her house using her dad’s old camera.

My dad had a camera and I asked him to give it to me. I used his old tripod only. It was zero rupees back then. All the money I spent was on balloons to put in the background.

Prajakta Koli

Once the videos started get a good response, she then quit her radio job and started doing YouTube full time.

The process of making money through the internet is very slow but once the ball gets rolling then the industry is a money-minting business. This is exactly what happened with Prajakta, she uploaded her first video in early 2015 and almost after 4 years of consistent content creation, Prajakta has build a subscriber base of more than 3.2 million people. (Ps. YouTubers don’t get 1 dollar for every subscriber)

Prajakta splits her revenue with One Digital Entertainment who handle the production and manage Prajakta.

This video is a sneak peek into Prajakta’s life. Although she has a different day everyday.

Video Editor: Ashish MacCune
Camera: Sanjoy Deb
Camera Assistant: Gautam Sharma
Producer: Bilal Jaleel