Ayushmann Khurrana on World Radio Day: My stint as a radio jockey helped me get confident about myself

Before he became the actor and musician his fans know him as today, Ayushmann Khurrana was a radio jockey. At the age of 22, he began his career in showbiz by hosting the breakfast show, which was coincidentally about Bollywood!

On World Radio Day (February 13), he reflects on his time on the waves, which gave him his first taste of fame.

“Here I was at my first job and they had given me the breakfast show and they had hugely promoted that show. I was on the hoardings in Delhi. So, that was really new for that time. We did a lot of disruptive content in 2006 when radio was going through the second phase and we started as a retro station! At 22, I don’t think there was anyone else, in my age group, who was well versed with retro Bollywood apart from me,” he recalls.

The 37-year-old, who completes 10 years in the film industry with Vicky Donor (2012), feels it is “very important” for everyone to cherish the starting point of one’s career.

Khurrana says, “That’s the formative years of someone’s career. It can either make you or break you and I was fortunate to be surrounded by creative people who were looking to disrupt.”

He credits his radio stint for giving him the confidence that he could become an actor in the future.

“I was always inclined to pursue a profession in entertainment and performance arts and my stint as a radio jockey really helped me get confident about myself. The success I saw with radio taught me that I could back myself and explore to become an entertainer. It is such a coincidence that I hosted some really off-centre shows. Looking back I feel I was always drawn to out of the ordinary concepts and that’s pretty much become my signature today as I tend to pick subjects that are fresh and unique,” he ends.