Mumbai: Prajakta Koli, widely known for her YouTuber alter-ego MostlySane, is busy adding feathers in her cap. A bachelor of mass media (BMM) graduate from Mulund’s Kelkar College, Prajakta is one of those nerdy kids who knew what they wanted to do right from the early age and perhaps that is why she also managed to make it to the Forbes' 30 Under 30 list last year.
The YouTube sensation made her acting debut with the short film Khayali Pulav in July this year after which she seems to have given acting a serious thought. The 27-year-old was last seen in web show Mismatched, which chronicles the journey of a group of students who meet on campus, each determined to outdo the other. And now, she is all set for her Bollywood debut which she is nervous about.
Prajakta walks into Bollywood with the film Jug Jugg Jeeyo, which also stars Neetu Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Kiara Advani, and Varun Dhawan whom she had interviewed as a radio intern and later collaborated on her channel for Kalank promotions. And all these have happened only in a span of five years.
Born and raised in Thane near Mumbai city, Prajakta aspired to be a radio jockey but when she actually entered the radio station it felt like she is standing at a crossroad. As an intern, she was recording interviews of stars who were not happy with a trainee interviewing them. Years later, in a conversation with BBC, she revealed that an actor even made her run to the nearby coffeehouse mid-interview during her radio days!
But it was the radio that opened up the door of bigger and better avenues for her. While interviewing Hrithik Roshan for the radio station, Koli was identified by One Digital Entertainment, who offered her to start her own channel and there has been no looking back since she took that leap of faith.
When she started off in 2015, her dream was to hit 30k subscribers. The task, in retrospect, seems achievable in a snap given her current status of followers on YouTube which is 5.89 mn, Instagram 2.7 mn, Facebook 8 lakh and 3 lakh on Twitter. She uploads videos every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She has created many comedy characters which are well-loved but amongst her most famous creation is a teenager called Montu. Prajakta, who is a single child has introduced Montu as her younger brother.
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Koli's has been an incredible journey where in five years of MostlySane has only seen highs. Because of the reach of her channel, Prajakta been an ambassador of YouTube's global program Creators For Change, been invited to the UN Headquarters in New York to be a part of their International Day of Tolerance and for Goalkeepers an initiative by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For 2018, the theme for the series was hate speech, and Koli’s video No Offense was screened at the UN headquarters in New York.
She was the first creator to have the opportunity to sit down and chat with Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube about future plans for the video-sharing platform. For Koli, YouTube is not only a platform that made her huge in India but a medium through which she can give back to society and for that she constantly engages herself in social initiatives.
In 2020, she graced the cover of BW Businessworld magazine as part of their Most Influential Women’s list.
In these five years as a digital content creator Prajakta has reached a stage where Bollywood makers come to her to collaborate for film promotions. Her list of collab videos includes Priyanka Chopra, Farhan Akhtar, Saif Ali Khan, Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Kajol, Ayushmann Khurrana and many more.
Koli in an interview had said that now that she has the liberty to decide whom to work with she is not hesitant to turn down those actors who were mean to her during her radio days.
When a leading film critic and journalist once asked Shah Rukh Khan about will Bollywood have its superstar after the three Khans, the Bollywood Badshah had said that the future is of digital stars who will be ruling the entertainment industry. SRK made this statement years before the social media scene bloomed. But, looking at the success of Prajakta and her contemporaries, it seems that SRK was cent per cent right in predicting the future trend.
