Evolution of the culture of stand-up comedy in India and identifying business opportunities / alternative models for the future

Abstract

The evolution of stand-up comedy over the past decade has been phenomenal. As it stands today, the Indian Stand-up industry is ~30 Cr INR strong1 and growing at an estimated rate of 25%. With more and more Indians hopping on the stage and making a serious career in stand-up comedy, the industry presents a relevant business opportunity to explore. With multiple avenues for potential expansion, we believe being on the lookout helps: there would be gaps that can still be filled and businesses (both existing and new) can benefit from exploiting these gaps. Through this project we aim to analyse the Indian spurt in this age-old industry, how the industry is positioned today and what gaps / opportunities can be leveraged by existing firms and new entrants. We begin by separating the artist from his work. By doing this, we are able to formulate a similarity: the artist being a company, generates services to be consumed by an endcustomer, just like any other service out there in the market. We analyse two value chains2 using the Porter’s 5-Forces model and identify areas of improvement: - Evolution of the Artist: the journey of a stand-up comedian - Stand-up comedy value chain: the development of the service Next, we uncover the insights to generate the key insights which we believe present a possible business opportunity to exploit. In order to verify our claims, we test the hypotheses using Expert Opinion and Secondary research. We present our findings as a set of actionable steps for a new / existing business.