TVF Pitchers

TVF Pitchers is a web series created by The Viral Fever (TVF) and developed by Arunabh Kumar. Written by Biswapati Sarkar, the series were directed by Amit Golani and features Naveen Kasturia, Arunabh Kumar, Jitendra Kumar and Abhay Mahajan. It follows four friends, Naveen, Jitu, Yogi and Mandal, who quit their jobs in order to develop their own start-up company.

The first season consists of five episodes and premiered online on TVF's content portal TVFPlay on 10 June 2015. A week later, on 17 June, it premiered on YouTube. The season finale premiered on TVFPlay on 30 August 2015. The show was highly appreciated and has since developed a cult status.

Premise
Four friends — Naveen Bansal, Jitendra "Jitu" Maheshwari, Yogendra "Yogi" Kumar and Saurabh Mandal — enter the business world by launching their own start-up company. Naveen becomes angry for not getting a project from the company in which he works, gets drunk and resigns. He faces a dilemma when he is offered a position in a branch office located in Beijing. He leaves for the airport but upon reaching there he realizes that he is not destined for routine jobs. At the same time, he receives news of his "B-Plan" reaching the final of the NASSCOM start-up conclave. This sets off a chain of events in which the four rediscover what they really want in life, and face challenges in getting their start-up idea off the ground.

After the release of the first trailer, the show's premise was compared to that of the American TV show Silicon Valley. However, when the pilot premiered, viewers realized this was not the case. Arunabh Kumar, founder and CEO of The Viral Fever, told The Huffington Post that if there's an American TV show that did inspire Pitchers – not in content but in spirit – it is the HBO drama Entourage about a young Hollywood star on the rise.

Cast

 * Naveen Kasturia as Naveen Bansal, the one who has the start-up idea and earlier working as Executive regional manager at MOKART (5 episodes)
 * Jitendra Kumar as Jitendra "Jitu" Maheshwari, who was working at Infocrat technologies company as a senior developer (5 episodes)
 * Arunabh Kumar as Yogendra Kumar "Yogi" Pandey, who was probably operational incharge at EliteCore technologies (5 episodes)
 * Abhay Mahajan as Saurabh Mandal, who was a senior consultant marketing head at a company and also an MBA graduate (5 episodes)
 * Aakanksha Thakur as Saumya Maheshwari, wife of Jitu (5 episodes)
 * Maanvi Gagroo as Shreya, Naveen's girlfriend (4 episodes)
 * Jaimini Pathak as Rajat Khanna, the CEO of MOKART (2 episodes)
 * Rajesh Sharma as Gary Bhujiawala (2 episodes)
 * Biswapati Sarkar as Puneet (2 episodes)
 * Sunil Sinha as Jitu's Father (2 episode)
 * Sameer Saxena as Ankit Bhardwaj (1 episode)
 * Abhishek Banerjee as Bhati

Soundtrack
For the original soundtrack for TVF Pitchers, The Viral Fever roped in Vaibhav Bundhoo who was a part of the media's previous series Permanent Roommates, after the overwhelming reception of the series. It consists of 15 original compositions created, produced and mixed by Bundhoo and was released in a separate jukebox format on YouTube on 5 September 2015. However the music album for the original series was released on 2 February 2017, as it took more time for mastering the tracks for streaming platform.

Release
Arunabh Kumar, who co-starred in TVF Pitchers and also the founder of TVF, announced that the series will release on May 2015. The official teaser was released on 3 April 2015, confirming the said date. However, the 4-minute teaser trailer of the series, which released on 27 May 2015, announced a new release date of 10 June 2015.

The first episode of the series was released on The Viral Fever's official media streaming platform TVF Play, and a week later, on 17 June 2015, it was uploaded on YouTube. Each episodes were released within a three-week window so as to upload simultaneously in TVF Play and YouTube. TVF Pitchers is the first ever web series to be released directly throught TVF Play with its inception in early 2015. The last episode of the series was unveiled on TVF on 30 August 2015 and in YouTube a day later.

After The Viral Fever announced a new Tamil streaming platform titled TVF Machi, in order to cover the audience across the regional market, the makers released the dubbed Tamil version of the series on 6 October 2017. In late 2016, it was reported that the second season of the series was reported to be in the process, however was not confirmed officially.

Reception
TVF Pitchers has been well received by the internet audience. The first episode has more than 7.7 million views. The series, hosted on TVF's official YouTube channel, has gathered over 1 million views for each episode.