A Year in the Life of Arbit Choudhury

Another year in the life of Arbit Choudhury has concluded. 2006 has been a memorable year for Arbit in more ways than one.

We have now successfully completed the 2nd continuous year of regular Arbit Comics release. When we had released the 1st Arbit Choudhury comic strip on the Arbit Choudhury Mailing List, way back on 1st January 2005, we knew that providing Arbit fans across the world their regular dose of Arbit humor would be a challenge.

Over the last 2 years, we have almost created our own version of the Global Delivery Model for Arbit, with the Arbit creators working from different geographies and time zones. In 2006 alone, Arbit work has been done from Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Bilaspur, Bhopal, Geneva and London.

If 2005 was a year in which Arbit Choudhury received unprecedented media coverage (featuring in Times of India and Business World), in 2006, Arbit reached out to fans across the globe through diverse means of communication. 2006 saw the launch of Arbit on SMS and RSS feeds and the launch of a new website.

We also started the Arbit Choudhury Fan Club on Orkut, and Arbit was enlisted at other portals like onlinecomics.net.

Arbit now reaches his fans through multiple channels -

- The Official Arbit Choudhury Mailing List

- The Arbit Choudhury website

- E-mail forwards

- SMS jokes (SMS "MBA" to 8888)

- RSS feeds.

Arbit Choudhury was selected as one of the few bright ideas for the Creative Future of India program. Out of more than 1000 entries, Arbit Choudhury was among the top 60 and received praise from the international expert panel. The program was organized by the British Council, in collaboration with IIM Bangalore.

Recognition also came from Wikipedia – the world’s largest free encyclopedia. The Wikipedia entry for Arbit Choudhury recognized it as the 'World's 1st' MBA Comic Character. Arbit was also featured in the 'Do You Know' section on Wikipedia’s homepage.

Fan mails kept pouring into our mailboxes throughout the year (mostly bouquets, and a few brickbats as well :)). It was this feedback and encouragement from Arbit fans which keeps Arbit going.

Arbit Choudhury comics is a relatively young entrant in the Comics space, but we realize our social responsibilities from the beginning.

We started out this year by extending your support to ProjectWHY, an NGO working for underprivileged children.

We also released a comic strip based on AIDS awareness, on the occasion of World AIDS Day.

We hope to continue such initiatives in the next year and welcome ideas and comments on these from our fans.

This year we launched a new version of our official website. The new website has improved navigation; improved, wholesome and more meaningful content and better visibility for latest alerts and events. Arbit Fans can find all that they want to know about Arbit on the site, as well as download loads of exciting stuff like Arbit’s Wallpapers, Avatars and posters.

Along with the website, we also tried out newer experiments with our Comics format. As a departure from established Comics practices we introduced ‘Real’ Backgrounds in some of the Comics during the 2006. We also attempted to improve the overall quality of the Comics.

In addition, we also introduced Arbit fans to all the other characters in Arbit World and added a new character ‘Perplex Singh’ to the Arbit Family.

The association of Arbit and MastishK is congenital; MastishK’04 served as a launch pad for Arbit and has been associated with it through MastishK Arbit Fresh Ideas Contest (MAFIC) ever since. So continuing the tradition, we conducted MastishK Arbit Fresh Ideas Contest (MAFIC) 2006 as a part of MastishK 2006. The contest invited Comic ideas for Arbit Choudhury Comic strips. The best 3 ideas were converted into Arbit Choudhury Comic Strips and subsequently rated by other participants of MastishK 2006.

Further, we continued to accept and publish Comics based on Fan ideas during 2006. The conceivers of the ideas were acknowledged in the Comic Strip itself. So do keep sending your ideas to arbit.mba@gmail.com and you can hope to find your own name on an Arbit Comic!

We also ran a special visitor content in 2006, wherein special visitors (based on hit counter) to the Arbit Choudhury website were rewarded by a mention of their names on the website and emails. This contest was launched to commemorate the occasion of the website hits reaching a milestone of 10,000 hits. The hit counter had clocked 20,155 hits when the year 2006 culminated. Notably, the second 10K hits took just 6 months to come by – thanks to fans’ support.

Another major milestone during 2006, was the Arbit Choudhury Mailing List becoming the 3rd largest Yahoo Group in the Comic Strips category, with more than 2200 members.

All in all, it has been a momentous year for Arbit Choudhury and your appreciation through emails, IM chats and even phone calls has strengthened our resolve to take Arbit Comics to newer heights.

Our major focus next year will be to catapult Arbit Choudhury Comics to the publishing space in print as well as online. If you have any ideas or suggestions to help towards the same– fire us an email at arbit.mba@gmail.com.

To receive the latest Arbit Choudhury comic strip straight into your mailbox, join the Arbit Yahoo Group / Mailing List . If you want to join the Arbit Yahoo Group but cannot do so, Please send a mail to arbit.mba@gmail.com with the subject “Join”- Your id will be added to our mailing list directly.

Do tell us how much you liked “Arbit Choudhury”, Your feedback and appreciation is our only reward. Send your comments / suggestions / feedback to arbit.mba@gmail.com