Chetan Bhagat – One of The Most Influential People in The World

The well known author of bestselling novels Five Point Someone (2004), 2 States (2009), Half Girlfriend (2014), One Indian Girl (2016), etc.: Chetan Bhagat is an Indian author, columnist, screenwriter, television personality and motivational speaker. He also writes columns about youth, career development and current affairs for The Times of India (in English) and Dainik Bhaskar (in Hindi).

From his bestselling books, five have been turned as Bollywood films (which are the hit films Kai Po Che!, 2 States, 3 Idiots, Half Girlfriend and Hello). The New York Times cited Chetan Bhagat as "the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history" in 2008. Time magazine named him as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

He is active on social media and has 6.4M followers on facebook, 12.2M followers on twitter and 275K around on instagram. This is a great number to be connected with fans and followers.

In an interview of Forbes India (published on Dec 23, 2009), he said “I’ve always written for young people, as that is the age one gets influenced most by books. However, today given my popularity, you will find my readers across all age spectrums. Sometimes, it is challenging to think what will work for my new found audience after 2 States, which is a universal book. I’d say I still write for somewhat younger Indians, who are of course educated as the books are in English. From 17–30 of five years ago, I’d now revise it to 14-45 age group”. With this we can analyse that his target audience is youth (the most influential one) and he always try to connect with them through his books, blogs or motivating speeches.

In his public life he’s not only a famous writer but a motivator. He has spoken at more than 100 organizations in 50 cities around the world. He is a popular motivational speaker and speaks at corporates, educational institutes, government bodies and volunteer agencies. His stellar education(IIT + IIM) and diverse professional background makes him the ideal person to share his thoughts and experiences on topics such as leadership, passion, values, team

building, motivation, achieving goals etc. While delivering a motivational talk to Gaya youth (on 25 Jun, 2013), he said “There is no short cut to success and one has to work very hard consistently to achieve the goal. Do something that you love and do not go by other people’s career perceptions.”

He is not a person who sticks to write for a single topic. He writes to reach large number of people from his inspirational blogs or entertaining books. On his website (http://www.chetanbhagat.com/), he elaborates “I write for change. In order to change, I want to first reach as many Indians as possible through entertainment and then influence them with my non-fiction writings and views. For this, I want to be flexible with the medium, be it books, TV, films, stage or the Internet. I do not see myself as an author alone, and my job is to reach and communicate with as many people as possible, using any available means. To me, everything I do fits in that underlying goal.”

Chetan Bhagat has other side of his public figure as “The King of Controversy”. The Hindustan times wrote about him as “The King of controversy: No half measures in Chetan Bhagat's Twitter spat with journo”. In this article, he was talking about his new novel, The Half-Girlfriend, and said at the IIT event, "Educated girls don't want to date a guy who doesn't speak English and this is what I have tried to bring out in my novel". His comment had led to a passionate response both for and against him. He has been trolled many times on twitter for his comments at public platform.

An article by Times of India, describes his popular controversies which deteriorated his public image. A defamation suit was filed against him for his book Half Girlfriend by Maharaja Bahadur Kamal Singh from Bihar. Also, he was accused for plagiarism by author Avnita Bajpai for the book One Indian Girl.

If he has fan following then he has trollers and haters too. The haters think that he has shifted his focus from books to film scripts and reality shows like Nach baliye. The versatility he wants to gain has turned out to be more negative among people. They have complaint about him that he is stuck with the romantic and unnecessary melodrama in his books and has never tried to write something new. He has become over hyped writer because of media attention. Now his image is so distorted that his memes and jokes made on IIT/IIM grads are everywhere on internet.