Why Tanmay Bhat Is Still Killing It in Indian Advertising?

Why Tanmay Bhat Is Still Killing It in Indian Advertising ?

2018 : Tanmay Bhat is finished in Indian Advertising.
2026: Indian advertising is asking if he is the next Piyush Pandey.

2018 was the year AIB collapsed in the middle of the MeToo movement.
He stepped away from his own company.
By the end of the year, most of Indian advertising had moved on from him.
The story was supposed to end there.

2019. He restarted alone on YouTube.
PUBG streams. Among Us with friends. Vlogs.

For four years that looked like a step down.
He was rebuilding an audience the industry no longer tracked.

In 2023, Tanmay and Devaiah Bopanna co-founded an advertising agency. They called it Moonshot.

By 2026, Moonshot is making ad films for :
CRED, with Rahul Dravid.
Lenskart, with Karan Johar.
Fireboltt, with MS Dhoni and MC Stan.
Dr Agarwals, with Sachin Tendulkar.

These are mainstream celebrity ad films.
The same lane Ogilvy and Wieden have owned in this country for thirty years.

Storyboard18 ran a piece this year openly asking if Tanmay Bhat could be the next Piyush Pandey.

For anyone outside the industry: Piyush Pandey is the Chairman of Ogilvy India.
He wrote Cadbury's "Kuch khaas hai" and the Fevicol ads.
He is the most decorated creative in the history of Indian advertising.

The man Tanmay is being measured against is the highest reference point in the country.

Alongside Moonshot, he still runs his own channels.
5.2 million subscribers on YouTube. 1.9 million followers on Instagram.
Brand integrations with Netflix, Google, CRED, Blinkit, Flipkart, Zomato, Airtel, OnePlus.

Instead of waiting for the industry to come back to him, he just kept building.

That is what relevance looks like in 2026.

We Love You Tanmay Bhat. ❤️

✍🏻 Mantra Joshi

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