With his new stand-up special Still Alive, Samay Raina returned to the stage and revisited the fallout of the India’s Got Latent controversy that briefly halted his momentum last year. The controversy, which erupted in February 2025 after YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia made an objectionable joke on Raina’s show, led to multiple FIRs and intense scrutiny online. While Raina has addressed the incident in his special, he recently opened up about the ambitious plans he had set in motion before the controversy brought everything to a halt. In a conversation with Chalchitra Talks, Raina revealed that before the controversy, he was actively building what he envisioned as a creator-led OTT ecosystem. “I had planned a lot of shows. I was on my way to making an OTT platform of crazy content. I had even built an app, and I had started YouTube memberships — I had gained a huge number of members, even YouTube was surprised. They had no idea a creator would monetise memberships like this. I was like, I can now make an OTT,” …