6 Years ! 6 Years is not just some 6 odd revolutions of Earth around the sun, but the years where our fortunes took a complete u-turn. 6 years ago, if anyone had told me that by the end of 2016 we would become the most popular Facebook page in India, we would have definitely called him a lunatic person. Probably, we might have had a hard laugh and ridiculed him for this joke; but no! God had different plans for us and he wanted this to turn into ‘Reality’.
They say ‘LIFE IS NOT A WISH GRANTING FACTORY’; well, that’s 100% true. It is not that we wished to become the most popular Facebook page in India; it just happened what you call as ‘By Chance’. Life is like a train journey at night, you don’t see anything, but you still cherish every single visual that you manage to see.
Throughout our journey, many people have actually asked us about our life. The life of ADMINS. Our page is our life, and it’s not a JOKE. Every single member who contributed towards the growth of this page has an untold story of his own. The story about his journey to take the path less travelled. The story of challenging the way our society thinks and works. The story of RVCJ. And today, on the 6th ‘buddaaaaaaay’ of our page, we are proudly sharing our journey with you guys – our 11 million family members.
There was a time when our 11 million family members started off with just one member. Back then we didn’t give any thought about how big it would be. There were many Facebook pages which were way ahead of us. We were like the horse on whom no one would bet on. Now looking back at those days makes us feel nostalgic. Don’t believe us? Look at how these numbers increased…
Now let me put this on a disclaimer that in this article, we i.e. Me (Shahid Javed), Ankit Mor and Harpreet Bajwa are going to discuss about our starting days. So any hater out here reading this article, we are indeed giving you a solid reason to mock at us and our success. PEACE ! !
It wasn’t an easy going start for me and can be said for the rest of the two founders too. Remembering those moments still chokes my throat. Although there is a different thrill in that, provided you succeed later on.
The concept of entrepreneurship back then was as confusing as its spelling and its pronunciation. Hope some entrepreneurs are getting that. Facebook was tagged as a time wasting activity by my Dad. And this page wasn’t even a kind of mini project like how today’s entrepreneurs tag their startup. It was out of the blue.
The most difficult decision for all of us was to get serious towards this PAGE. Yes, there was a time when RVCJ wasn’t that important to us. We were all busy in our 9-5 jobs, making money, competing with the societies benchmarks and what not.
3 of us hailed from a middle class family. In India, there is only one dream of every middle class family father – helping his son to get a REAL JOB in his life. Our families were no different. The decision to leave our job wasn’t that easy. Not just because our family members won’t accept it, but because we ourselves were not so sure about RVCJ WEBSITE. Yes, 6 years ago, we were not sure about it.
The man behind the formation of the page: Shahid Javed!
I was an MBA graduate that gave me the confidence to start my own venture which eventually landed up as a loss scheme for me. Apart from the losses incurred and making up for them, I was working in a 9-5 job so as to make up to my needs. At an early stage of my life I was bankrupt. It was disheartening. I had a child, a wife, a family. They were looking up to me. Meanwhile RVCJ was just doing fine. During the first year of RVCJ, there were just some 30-40 thousand odd subscribers that meant a lot to me. Talking to them, listening to their problems and helping them out gave me satisfaction.
How I Met Your Admin – Ankit Mor
People, I feel the urge to tell you that he was a real pain in the “Arse”. Although the best thing about him was that he was a die hard fan of our page even when RVCJ was just nothing. And that attracted my mind towards him. He used to comment on every post that I shared. He used to share his own memes in the comment section which were sometimes awful but most of the times were brilliant and apt. The best thing was his quick posting time that was crisp and humorous at the same time. I used to read every comment back then as they seemed to be a bit less time consuming compared to that of now. His non stop memes posting made me kept an eye on him and his talent. One fine day he asked me to make him the admin and without even uttering a word, I did it and the rest is what RVCJ has achieved in these 6 years – Sheer Brilliance.
And at that point of time, Ankit Mor came into our team. Apart from the magic which he did for RVCJ, the struggle for him was real too. Back then we knew that we were not doing anything exceptional and were also well aware of the fact that we weren’t earning anything, but there was this passion and love for the page which kept us working hard to post memes on regular interval of time. The success of RVCJ is not out of fluke or an overnight blackhat seo trick. It is because of the dedication of each and every member of our team. Waking up late at night so as to keep up the pace with the trending topic was one among the tiring things that we all did back then so as to make this page a big success.
Meanwhile Ankit was struggling hard to break the ice with his family members about leaving his job. He had a very secured and well settled job in PepsiCo which he bagged by cracking the interview among 40+ job seekers. Within 2 months he was promoted to Customer Executive with a healthy salary and was asked to join their office in Bangalore. He chose to stay in Hyderabad because of his mom’s health and decided to work from there itself. Leaving a well secured job like that wasn’t easy for him, given the kind of circumstances he was going through. But his passion and love for page drew him to leave his job and dedicate his full time for RVCJ. He has one of the biggest role to put RVCJ where it is today.
There was a time somewhere in 2014-15 ( can’t recall ) when Ankit’s grandmother left this world. It was a tough time for him. He went to his native place for cremation ceremony. The mantra for the success of our page is consistency. He wasn’t in his entire mood or charm to post for our page and I had asked him to take some days off. However, I was surprised to see his dedication level for the page even at that time too. He didn’t stop from posting memes at regular intervals. And on that day, I got to know what RVCJ meant for every member of its page.
One of the biggest breakthrough of our journey came in when we launched our website. In a way, our initial journey was like a newbie in stock market, we sucked at it and screwed a lot, but that is how you learn something in life. You fall, you weep, you make efforts to stand and you run again ! Usually at such point of time, many entrepreneurs lose hope and and behave very shallow about the things which they lately believed in i.e. ENTREPRENEURSHIP.
Luckily we were aware of the fact that maintaining a website was not that easy as per quoted by various bloggers in their interviews. You need to devote a whole lot of time for bringing up a website with the best SEO optimization. Ankit and I were just MBA graduates who hardly knew anything about IT stuffs.
How I Met Your Admin – Harpreet
We had no idea about revenue generation as there was no techie in our group. Somewhere in March 2014, Harpreet started texting to us i.e. our page about his business ideas. Ankit kept on ignoring his messages like how we always do for all potential partnership programs. At that point of time, we used to get around 20-30 such collaboration startup ideas. Harpreet was definitely not the first one. But there was something different. We discussed about it for endless hours and that made us understand his real dedication towards his start-up. It is very important for all the entrepreneurs who are seeking collaboration with various marketing bodies that you need to be constantly in contact with your partner. You need to talk to them more than your spouse. Even Harpreet Bhai did the same and sadly we had to hear his poor jokes at times. Nowadays people just ping us their business plan and vanish off. That’s is totally unprofessional.
Harpreet had his website onlinesasta.com . He wanted to promote it on our page. However Ankit wasn’t ready for this as he was afraid that Harpreet might hack into our page. But our endless chats on OUR business plan made our friendship strong and finally we agreed upon something that could work. EVENTUALLY IT DID WORK, RIGHT ?
The timing of his entry was as sublime as his idea of the launching date. He prepared the website and launched it on 10 October 2014. Launching the website was easy but taking the decision to stay dedicated towards it for full time was very difficult.
From the scale of 0-10, the difficulty level for Harpreet to leave his job almost broke the meter and took a slingshot to Mars. Among all of us, he was the best settled one. Having a freaking amazing salary package of 7 digits back then in 2014 itself tells you the whole story. He was married, working in an MNC IT Firm, earning good, in short he had no reasons to take up this risk for us and jump into this pool of uncertainties. But he did that with all known consequences. He resigned somewhere in November. I happened to meet him in the very next month – December 2014. Resigning from your job for a person’s dream whom you haven’t even met yet is very difficult and stupid. I must say that. But that’s how we describe Harpreet Bhai. Courageous and Brave with a pinch of Stupidity. His dad almost had a heart attack (not a real one) when he got to know his son resigned from a high profile corporate job for a mere Facebook page. Apart from that, his mom threw the iconic jaw dropping look and wife gave the casual ‘don’t talk to me looks’. Fun fact, she didn’t talk to him for a whole 1 day. Harpreet came back to Punjab from Pune without booking a return ticket. Luckily after that day GOD didn’t give him a reason to book one.
Getting almost 86% in 12th boards back then and cracking Maths and Science Olympiad by securing 41st and 412th All India Rank were some of the good reasons for him to hope for cracking IIT. But sadly he flunked when it mattered the most. Just like every other aspirant, he was disheartened too. However he did complete his engineering and got selected in campus placement in an IT company. It is very important for every aspirant to understand that IIT is not the ultimate destination for word ‘Success’. The moment when you will start thinking like that, your real struggle will begin.
How My Family Reacted On My Decision.
The news of my decision to leave my job came in like surgical attacks to my family members. They came in, did the damage and went away. My Dad was still denying it by saying that I was just playing a prank on him, later on the silence on my face faded away the smile from his face. However my wife supported me throughout this time except the moment when I told her about it. Just like in Harpreet Bhai’s case, even my wife understood me. God knows what magic happened within that one day. The support is always important. No matter from where do you get it. It is Important ! !
And Then We Met The Backbone Of RVCJ – Piyush Dwivedi
Apart from these two people, there is a 4th Musketeer too – Piyush Dwivedi. He was the one behind all our memes. He created them. We used to browse through various topics and give it to him and he was the one who pulled out those viral memes and trolls. He still does that along with managing various roles in RVCJ. He is with us since 2012. He was a very bright student and secured 90% in his boards exams ( probably the best among us). Along with that he cleared his CS 2nd Level in his first attempt only. His family had big expectations from him. While studying for his CS he continued to make memes for us. And later in 2014, he was out searching for jobs. And by the time we were done with Monetizing for our website, we gave him this JOB OFFER. He was too good at it. We couldn’t take the chance of having someone else for this serious role. But he had a whole different things to worry about. He took up our Job but like all of us, he had to convince his family too. He left his CS just for RVCJ. His family members were shocked but he managed to calm them down. He was just 22 back then. The maturity shown by him in managing everything from RVCJ to his family was worth the praise. And from that day onwards, he is in our core member team. He is an emotional guy and his decision affected his friend circle. During that time it was his family who came in for his rescue when he felt left out from his friend circle. He had 0 friends back then. But RVCJ gave him a whole new world.
The Downfall Of RVCJ
There was a time in our journey when everything was going smooth and then suddenly we had these problems. Recollecting those memories now still gives me goosebumps. Our website which was acting like the main source of income for us was once banned from the ADSENSE PROGRAM. For the next 15 days we had 0 income. Our Website was banned somewhere around 10-15 November 2014. Within a month or so we got our first big setback. All of us became quite nervous about it as we had no jobs which in a way ( and I hate to admit ) was indeed a back-up and secured job for us. However, GOD had different plan for us and ban was removed by 10 December 2014. I still wonder what would have been the scenario if the ban was still there.
Apart from that, there was a time when everything came to halt. We had no idea about what was happening to our page. Till 2014 we had managed to make more than 5 million family members, but it was the time between 2014-2015 which went quite pale. Our post reaches were quite limited, no growth was seen in our page, basically everything was moving down except our hopes. Hope is something that has the potential to do wonders. It was just a bad phase. And like every season, it passed away and brought another sunshine in our world. Within an year, we managed to get more than 5 million subscribers. That was just because we didn’t lose hope.
Family Started Supporting
There are certain moments in your life when you realize that your life is on track. Initially our families weren’t supporting our decision but we kept on going. Their reactions were very obvious and genuine too. Their concerns were legitimate. We were young and stupid, well I guess that’s what made us courageous and gave us a reason to take risks. In the case of Harpreet Bhai, still today his wife stays awake with him till he finishes up his work, just like the old days when we were just a small start-up. His father was still angry, but it was his wife who supported him with his decision (ignore that don’t_talk_to_me wala look).
People usually say that ‘Online Ka Maal Bekar Milta Hai’ . Our family had the same perception. Online money was just a Mirage for them. But I am lucky enough that I got real ONLINE LIFETIME FRIENDS. For many people it is very difficult to lay your trust upon anyone in today’s time. RVCJ has 5 main admins who have the right to post on its page.
And to be honest, before July 21, 2016 ( The day when RVCJ crossed 10 Million Likes) none of us had met each other. The way they showed dedication towards the page, made me realize their passion for it. May be that explains the reason behind the 6 years of partnership without meeting each other. It’s the trust on which these relationships are built upon.
Wait, ANKIT & SHAHID Had A Fight ? Hell NO, But it’s true.
It is indeed difficult to digest this truth but it happened. And not just between me & ANKIT, but we all had some differences with each other in the course of our journey. When our page was hacked twice within short period of time, many people started telling me that ANKIT could be the one doing all this. For a moment I did think like that. Till today I regret about thinking like that. The guy who brought up this page to such great heights can and will never do such things. But I was just a human whose mind could be easily manipulated and then argument broke between us. Blame game started, accusing, abusing and what not. However that’s the beauty of our friendship, the very next day we got our page back and it was just because of ANKIT’S dedication. Asking Facebook and its people by giving them valid documents, while I was all pale and blue in fever thinking about my possible degraded future.
We all have arguments on various things. But that’s what makes us a family. Every family has arguments, fight and what not. But at the end of the day, it’s the respect and mutual admiration that we have for each other that saves our day.
Why the name – Rajnikant v/s CID Jokes?
The answer lies within the question itself. It is all about JOKES. Anything funny, humorous and sarcastic, basically everything that lights up a smile on a human’s face, gets shared on our page. The idea of creating this page was a result of series of instances. Back then in 2010, Rajinikant sir’s movie – ROBOT was released. The catchy lines and crispy funny quotes from the movie were gaining quite a lot of popularity which were getting shared on many Facebook pages and on BBM group chats too. Also, by that time, CID TV Series were rocking the Industry by doing many promotional episodes with Salman Khan for his upcoming movie like ‘READY’ and ‘BODYGAURD’. Social media users were taking a dig on these two subjects individually. So I decided to fuse the subject together where I would share the content on both of these subjects. And from there itself, the best chapter of my life was scripted – Rajnikant Vs CID Jokes.
RVCJ & Bollywood tie-ups!
With the grace of God and support of our 11 million followers, we opened our fully functional office in Mumbai this year with the name “RVCJ Digital Media”. Yes, this was very much needed, since working from home, managing meetings, attending client queries was getting difficult. With other 2 staying outside Mumbai, it is my responsibility to look after Office operations. Slowly and gradually, with our team’s efforts, BIG clients approached us for movie tie-ups and this was indeed a dream come true for us.
There were times when we used to crave to go for movies in theaters, but couldn’t afford one, but RVCJ Digital Media helped us reach beyond those dreams. Being a digital media partner for many movies, it is a pleasure to watch our logo on ‘Big Screen’. Then, for all our beloved fans, we even started the concept of Live Facebook interviews, so that they can interact and ask all possible questions to their favorite stars. Believe me, our users have become crazy for this concept! We have had many celeb guests on our page right from Varun Dhawan, Jacqueline Fernandez, John Abraham, Prabhudeva, Sushant Singh Rajput and many more. We promise to bring all those stars too, who you wish to interact with, not to forget the Khans.
RVCJ Team!
You guys might have abused us. May be a lot of times. But we are a family and we do agree that sometimes we go off the topic and talk shit. But that is how people grow. They commit mistakes and then they realize it. We three fought and still fight like idiots. But the best thing about these fights are – we forget about them the very next day. You can’t hold grudges against each other and still keep hope for to make your page a big success. Saying ‘sorry’ shouldn’t be considered as ‘loss of a battle’ but instead a proud thing. It’s a sign of respect and self introspection. And in a way life has given me two amazing friends aka partners who are gem of a person.
RVCJ Presence on Internet
1. Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Rajnikant.Vs.CIDJokez
Our Facebook fan page named ‘Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes’ is one of the most popular fan pages in India, with over 10.90+ million followers – majority among the age group between 18 and 35 years. Over the last 6 years, our Facebook page has seen a meteoric growth and emerged as a brand that laid the foundation for our other business ventures. Here’s URL of the same
2. Website – Our website http://www.rajnikantvscidjokes.in is attracting over 30 to 40 Million visitors per month, bringing us to the elite group of top 150 websites as rated by Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rajnikantvscidjokes.in).
3. Viber – http://chats.viber.com/rajnikantvscidjokes
We have verified public profile on Viber with over 64000+ followers.
4. Instagram – https://instagram.com/rvcjinsta/
We have 6,39,000 followers on Instagram.
5.Twitter – https://twitter.com/RVCJ_FB
We have recently started on Twitter and are already close to 17,000 followers on it.
6.YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/user/RajnikantVsCIDJoke
We have our own YouTube channel with over 64,000 subscribers. However due to our ongoing quest of a reputed production house and scarcity of resources/time, we are not able to proliferate our business on YouTube. You can view some of our completed projects at: https://www.youtube.com/user/RajnikantVsCIDJoke
7. Android App – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.rajnikantvscidjokes
We have recently launched Android App and already close to 84,000 downloads.
Other verticals on Facebook
We are looking to expand in other verticals too. Here are few of our new Pages that we are developing:
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Videos – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJVideos/ – Verified page having 320K Likes
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Hindi – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJHindi/ – Verified page having 37K Likes
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Sports – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJSports/ – 175K Likes
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Movies – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJMovies/ – 156k Likes
Reading content in your own regional language is always fun so keeping this thing in mind, we have created regional pages, you can like the page applicable to your state/region to get RVCJ jokes in regional language:-
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Punjabi – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJPunjabi/
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Marathi – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJMaharashtra/
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Gujarati – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJGujarat/
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Telugu – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJTelugu/
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Bengali – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJBengali/
Rajnikant V/s CID Jokes Bhojpuri – https://www.facebook.com/RVCJBhojpuri/
Special Thanks To All Image Creators!
RVCJ is incomplete without hilarious memes. Do you know who creates these? Well we have super-awesome and talented individuals who work day and night just to entertain you with those funny images. Having a look at the image doesn’t even take a minute, but creating them takes hours!.
The team includes Anshay Tomar, Vikas Gupta, Ommi Satyavijay Gangawane, Musthaiz Ahmed, Utkarsh Shukla, Sonu Pradhan, Mayank Sharma, Vikram Singh Panwar, Gaurav Sharma, Pankaj Sonkamble, Sohail Baig and Bhupesh Bansal
And Content Writers Too!
Ever wondered who gives you your daily dose of news? Well, it is our content team, who play with words and make it as creative as they can. Here’s our content team…
Shuchi Bhatnagar & Pooja Sachdev- The ones who constantly serve you with viral news! We have other awesome content creators too;
Aafreen Gadhiya, Anshay Tomar, Bhupesh Bansal, Devashish Bhuyan, Kushal Singhania, Saranga Sharath, Sweety Arora, Shalaka Patil.
And our contributor list is never ending!
Contributors share awesome posts/memes/trolls via WhatsApp Group. We would like to thank all of them for their selfless support & help building an awesome RVCJ community
Afraz Qureshi, Arvind Valakatti, Bhupesh Bansal, Chandan Prasad, Farhan Rajani, Gaurav Patil, Hardiek Kanteliya, Hardik Khushal Dand, Khuzem H G, Ozair Khan, Gibraan Noorani, Razi Ansari, Suraj Chokani, Sandeep Chandan, Vumesh Choksi, Ronak Rao, Harry Goswami, IPS Khurana, Tamonas Pal, Anshay Tomar, Himanshu, Mayank Patel, Amar Sorde, Barsha, Dipika, Deepshikha, Gouri Aggarwal, Nikky, Divya, Enakshi, Heta, Kavita, Krupa , Madhu, Neha, Razia, Simmy, Shubhangi, Sneha, Shubhi, Sreshtha, Zehra, and Akshay Zine.
Working hours!
I am sure most of you might be wondering as to what is the big deal in running a Facebook page? Just 4-5 hours here and there and the work is done! But NO, you are under the wrong impression. In the quest of winning your hearts, we sacrificed our personal life. Back then, while we were struggling hard to make a mark in your heart, we still had to do 11-12 hours of corporate job to feed our families. It wasn’t easy to maintain that BALANCE. And after coming back to home, we had to spend minimum 7-8 hours for RVCJ. In short, we were working for almost 19-20 hours in a day. I still remember those days when I used to be awake till 2 AM and then sleep just till 6 AM, just because I had my full-time job responsibility too. My family had issues with my timings and they definitely weren’t happy with that. Many of us started losing our friends because we were not able to devote our time to them. To bring RVCJ to such a feat, we had to go through a lot of sacrifices. Each sacrifice has its own story. One thing that these 6 years have taught me is that in order to achieve your ultimate goal, you will have to come out of your cocoon i.e your freaking comfort zone.
Even our freelancers & employees work for almost 11-12 hours a day, but they do it out of enjoyment, without a single complaint. They know it is their duty and responsibility to take RVCJ to the next level! But today I bring forward a key mantra for the sucess. My 6 years of experience. I could have easily stayed silent on it. But the main purpose of sharing this story was to inspire you guys. The mantra for sucess is NO SHORT CUTS which you apparently were looking for. Dream big and always work hard towards achieving it. A blend of smart work and hard work is the best thing that you can ever have.
Thanks to all the followers
RVCJ was, is and will be nothing without you people. On a personal note, we owe you guys everything. Whatever we are, it’s just because of you all. To be honest, I am not making this up, by writing an article. This is just a special thank you note that has made my eyes wet. A small decision in our life can indeed bring in big difference! ! Stay Blessed.