Indian Matchmaking has catapulted all of its cast members from everyday people to worldwide celebrities. Expert matchmaker Sima Taparia gained overnight success while many memes were made on Aparna the attorney. The followers rose and the trends began, but there’s one person on that list that was already a known name. Srinivas Rao, a popular podcaster and author who was brought in as Aparna’s match came to be branded as “Srini the loser.” The tag might have settled on his name for now but it doesn’t really diminish Srinivas’ pre-Indian Matchmaking online success.
Mumbai’s top matchmaker Sima Taparia was tasked with finding suitable matches for lonesome Indian singles on Indian Matchmaking. Using her decades of expertise, she filtered her exclusive list of names to match them with those she deemed most worthy. Taking into account Aparna’s taste, Taparia zeroed in on Srinivas, even though the attorney didn’t really approve of his love for comedy. Still, looking forward to a meaningful experience, Aparna and her family met Srinivas for a tête-à-tête but weren’t eventually impressed. Aparna felt that they were not on the same page as he wasn’t very ambitious about his career trajectory. Meanwhile, her mom Jotika called Srinivas a loser under her breath. Fans felt that this was rude and uncalled for, and a Twitter user even thought that it was “probably the most shocking and ugliest comment ever on television.” But it was viewers that were already familiar with Srinivas, even before his Indian Matchmaking stint that really took offense.
A tweet about Srinivas reads, “Srini had the likes of Tim Ferris and Seth Godin as guests on his popular podcast. He definitely ain’t some loser, that’s for sure." This makes sense as although Srinivas prefers to lead with the title of keynote speaker when it comes to describing himself, his career is packed with a lot more. From the past decade, he has been the founder of Unmistakable Media, which has a series of podcasts that appear to be popular among entrepreneurs. He himself claims on his LinkedIn profile that ‘The Unmistakable Creative Podcast’ receives around 6,000+ downloads for each episode. The podcast has over 500 5-star reviews and has also charted on iTunes in Canada and Australia, which is again a sign of a healthy listenership.
Apart from the podcast, the company has created a series of animated shorts, live events, and is also working on feature-length films. As hinted on Indian Matchmaking, Srinivas is also a well-known author. So far, he has four books under his name, the latest being An Audience of One that came out in 2018. The book speaks about how by focusing their creative work on pleasing themselves, one can increase their productivity, happiness, and (eventually, paradoxically) the size of their audience. Alongside, he also doles out practical advice to his Twitter fans on the regular.
Though his career chart has been a mixed bag, it has helped Srinivas gain expertise in various aspects of marketing, and on the basis of this. he has made a strong enough name for himself. On the other hand, being labeled as a “loser” on reality TV didn’t seem to bother the author much. “It’s a good opportunity to talk about how we define success in our culture,” tweeted Srinivas before adding that he had some bourbon to celebrate the moment. “As a creative person you sign up for a life of being misunderstood,” he wrote about his appearance on Indian Matchmaking as he quoted Van Wilder. “You shouldn’t take life to seriously or you’ll never get out alive.” Wise words of advice for any aspiring reality TV contestants out there, right?
All episodes of Indian Matchmaking are now available to stream on Netflix.
Source: Srinivas Rao, Tanzimmy