''Arbit Choudhury'' is a

coming of age Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can b ...

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be co ...

run in the format of a

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

from

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Plot

The plot of each strip revolves around the protagonist named "Arbit Choudhury" who is an MBA student.

Choudhury Chowdhury is a title of honour, usually hereditary, originating from the Indian subcontinent. It is an adaption from Sanskrit. During the Mughal rule, it was a title awarded to eminent people, while during British rule, the term was associated ...

is a common Indian surname while the word "Arbit" refers to the arbitrary ways of the protagonist. The strip deals with the campus life of a B-school student, replete with

jargon Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular Context (language use), communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The conte ...

and has Arbit Choudhury making mockery of management concepts and theories. He is characterised as a student with big dreams and bigger mouth, studying at a leading business school. Each strip is carried in a single panel and is not serialised (that is, each strip is complete in itself).

Development

The webcomic and its protagonist were created by Shubham Choudhury and Hemantkumar Jain in 2004, then students at

NITIE Indian Institute of Management Mumbai (IIM Mumbai) previously recognized as the National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai (NITIE Mumbai), is a graduate business school under the Ministry of Education (India), Government of India lo ...

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

. It was initially created to serve as a mascot to the online contest MastishK' 04, which is part of ''Prerana'', the inter-collegiate youth festival of the institute. In the subsequent years, competitions were held among the students of various B-schools, to identify good ideas for the comic strip, in addition to the ideas generated by the creators themselves. The concept of a comic strip revolving around the life of a B-school student proved successful at the festival and this led to its transformation into a webcomic. The strip is updated once every 15 days. Apart from the regular ideas, patrons can also submit ideas for ''Arbit Choudhury'' through its website and such contributions are acknowledged as contributors in the strip itself.

Awards

''Arbit Choudhury'' was awarded with the

Manthan Award The Manthan Award is an annual award for South Asia given in recognition of exceptional digital content creation. Nominations are accepted from the public and multiple awards are given in many categories. In 2011 ''The Hindu'' referred to the Mant ...

for demonstrating how ICT could be used as an effective marketing tool.

References

External links

Bombay Times dated 18 October 2005 - when A meets B
A supplement from

Times of India ''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English language, English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the List of newspapers in India by circulation, t ...

Making of Arbit Choudhury

Listing at Onlinecomics.net

2000s webcomics School webcomics Coming-of-age webcomics Student culture in India 2004 webcomic debuts Indian webcomics {{Webcomic-stub