Writer, actor and comedian Aditi Mittal started off as a stand-up comic just as stand-up comedy was really taking off, and considered a viable career option, in India. Mittal, a huge Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig fan, quit her cushy yet boring job in New York around 2008 and returned to India to join the burgeoning stand-up scene. One of the first women to gain popularity on the comedy circuit, she became a regular headliner alongside fellow comedians Tanmay Bhat, Rohan Joshi and Ashish Shakya at The Comedy Store, later replaced by Canvas Laugh Factory at Palladium Mall, Mumbai.
Since then, she’s only soared up the popularity ladder. Mittal has performed not only in India but also at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, Melbourne Comedy Festival in Australia and Montreux Comedy Festival in Switzerland. Now, you can catch her perform in Mumbai on Saturday, January 23 at Cat Café Studio, Andheri; Sunday, January 24 at Pasmil Studio, Bandra and Sunday, January 31 at Tarang Studio, Khar.
In 2013, she performed her first solo show ‘Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say’ at the Canvas Laugh Factory. Acerbic and cheeky, Mittal discusses a vast number of topics ranging from life, gender, beauty, being single, menstruation, sex and more.
It was at this show that she debuted her two popular comic alter egos: sex therapist Dr Lutchuke and Bollywood starlet Dolly Khurana.
So popular was this show that in 2017, Netflix signed a deal with Mittal and turned it into an hour-long special. This made Mittal the first female comedian from India to have a special featured on any streaming platform.
In 2014, she was invited by BBC for the 100 Women Conference, which celebrates women achievers in different fields, in London. Later that year, she held the distinction of being on another completely different panel. She was the only woman to roast Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor with All India Bakchod. And while she did escape the infamy her fellow panelists couldn’t, it definitely didn’t hurt in establishing her popularity.
In 2019, she joined Atul Khatri and Amit Tandon in the India segment of the Netflix special Comedians of the World. Her 30-minute set (‘Girl Meets Mic’) was mostly about dropping truth bombs about why women need to be funny.
