Arbit Choudhury

Infobox webcomic|
title = Arbit Choudhury


caption = A comic strip portraying "Arbit Choudhury
author = Shubham Choudhury and Hemantkumar Jain
url = http://arbitmba.com/
status = Every 15 days
began = 2004
ended =
genre = Business school, Coming of age
ratings =

"Arbit Choudhury" is a coming of age webcomic run in the format of a comic strip from India. It is regarded as the world's first-ever B-school comic strip.Fact|date=May 2008

Plot

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

Genesis

The character and the comic strip were created by Shubham Choudhury and Hemantkumar Jain in 2004, then students at NITIE, Mumbai. It was initially created to serve as a mascot to MastishK' 04, an online contest - a 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.

Popularity

The strip became popular, with its own [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arbit_mba/ Yahoo groups site] and [http://www.arbitmba.com/ Website] . It has achieved a following in distant countries such as UK, US, Cyprus and Oman. Arbit Choudhury was also awarded with the [http://manthanaward.org Manthan Award] for demonstrating how ICT could be used as an effective marketing tool.

Current status

The strip is updated once every 15 days. Apart from the regular ideas, patrons can also submit ideas for the strip through the website and such contributions are acknowledged by naming the contributor in the strip itself.

References

* [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1267366,curpg-1.cms Bombay Times dated 18 October 2005 - when A meets B] A supplement from Times of India
* [http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c224/arbitmba/Arbit%20in%20Media/BWArbitPage.jpgA write-up in the Businessworld] issue dated 3 October, 2005, pp.90.
* [http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c224/arbitmba/Arbit%20in%20Media/NewIndExpress-Page.jpgThe brave new World of webcomics] an article in The New Indian Express June 15, 2007
* [http://arbitmba.com/ Official website for the strip]
* [http://mastishk-nitie.blogspot.com/2004/10/making-of-arbit.html Making of Arbit Choudhury]
* [http://www.onlinecomics.net/pages/details/listing.php?comicID=7937 Listing at Onlinecomics.net]
* [http://managementinformatika.blogspot.com/2007/09/exclusive-interview-with-arbit.html Interview of Creators]
* [http://manthanaward.org/section_synopsis.asp?id=108 Manthan Award 2007 Winners list]

External links

* [http://mastishk.nitie.net Mastishk - India's first fully online Bschool Gaming challenge]
* [http://prerana.nitie.net Prerana]