Rahul Subramanian

Rahul Subramanian is a Mumbai-based stand-up comedian known for his sharp observational humour, natural crowd work, and an effortless ability to switch between Hindi and English — sometimes in the same sentence — without ever losing the room. A former brand manager, Rahul made the leap into comedy in 2014, cutting his teeth at Mumbai’s biggest open mics and comedy clubs — Canvas Laugh Club, The Hive, Three Wise Monkeys — before becoming one of the most consistently working comics on the Indian circuit.

His break came alongside writing partner Kumar Varun under the duo name Random Chikibum, winning the inaugural YouTube Comedy Hunt and going on to write viral sketches for All India Bakchod, including the widely shared Honest Placements. That sketch-writing instinct for the specific and the relatable carried straight into his stand-up.

Rahul has released three solo specials on Amazon Prime Video: Kal Main Udega, an hour built on loosely connected, deliberately tangential observations; Improv All-Stars, an improv special showcasing a side of his comedy rarely seen on Indian stages; and Rahul Talks to People — India’s first stand-up special built entirely around crowd work, a format that plays directly to his strength of turning a random audience exchange into the best bit of the night. He followed it with the globally toured show Who Are You?, which had a sold-out month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before touring internationally.

Beyond his solo work, Rahul is a recognisable face from Comicstaan (as both contestant and mentor across seasons) and Comedy Premium League on Netflix, and co-hosts the podcast Kuch Bhi alongside fellow comedians Rohan Desai and Urooj Ashfaq. He’s also acted in the streaming series Pushpavalli. In 2019, he became one of the few Indian comics to debut a special at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

What makes Rahul’s comedy stick is the same thing that made his sketches work years ago: he finds the joke in things everyone has lived through but nobody bothers to talk about — bad placements, awkward family WhatsApp groups, the specific dread of Mumbai traffic — and turns it into something a room full of strangers immediately recognises as their own life.