Abishek Kumar

Abishek Kumar is a Chennai-based Tamil stand-up comedian and actor who won the first season of Amazon Prime Video's "Comicstaan Semma Comedy Pa" (Comicstaan Tamil) in 2020 with a grand-finale score of 9.5, ahead of runner-up Syama Harini. An engineering graduate, he began performing stand-up in 2017, taking his first stage time after a scheduled comedian dropped out of a show he was attending as an audience member. He is best known for his viral character "Mrs. Janaki", a strict, catchphrase-spouting schoolteacher he launched on social media on 9 June 2020; her first video was shared 11,000 times within three hours and helped double his Instagram following to 20,000 within three weeks. Delivered mostly in English peppered with Tamil phrases and built on physical, gestural comedy partly inspired by fellow comedian Naveen Richard, the character made Kumar a viral sensation across age groups. He is known for family-friendly, high-energy physical comedy and strong crowd-work improvisation. His YouTube channel, home to his Mrs. Janaki sketches and other comedy content, has grown to more than 1.1 million subscribers.