Samay Raina

Early Life and Stand-up Beginnings

Samay Raina was born in Jammu city in the former Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. His family are conservative Kashmiri Pandits from the Salia area of Seer Hamdan Anantnag. He spent his formative years in Hyderabad, where he completed his schooling. For higher education, he moved to Pune, Maharashtra, to enroll in a print engineering course at Vidhyarthi Griha's College of Engineering and Technology. Raina has stated he found this course to be a waste of time, and he instead turned his focus to the local comedy scene.

His first open mic performance was on 27 August 2017. He quickly became a regular performer in Pune, eventually graduating to opening for well-known comedians like Anirban Dasgupta and Abhishek Upmanyu. As his reputation grew, he relocated to Mumbai to pursue stand-up comedy professionally, performing successful shows there and in various cities across India. His participation in the 2019 season of Comicstaan on Amazon Prime Video was prompted by a suggestion from fellow comedian Aakash Gupta. Raina and Gupta emerged as the joint winners of the competition, confirming Raina's place in the Indian comedy landscape.

YouTube and Chess Popularization

When the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of all outdoor events in India, Raina could no longer perform stand-up on stage. Following a suggestion from comedian Tanmay Bhat, he began live streaming chess games on his YouTube channel. This move proved to be a major shift in his career. His viewership received a substantial boost after he invited the popular chess YouTuber Antonio Radić, known as Agadmator, to his stream.

This collaboration prompted Indian Grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi to express interest in joining Raina on stream. Gujrathi's subsequent appearance provided another significant increase in Raina's audience. The two developed a strong working relationship, frequently appearing on each other's channels. Gujrathi has credited Raina with suggesting he move his streaming from Twitch to YouTube. Raina's channel became a hub where humor met high-level chess analysis.

Many chess professionals, including Grandmasters Viswanathan Anand, Vidit Gujrathi, Anish Giri, Teimour Radjabov, Baskaran Adhiban, Emil Sutovsky and International Masters Tania Sachdev and Sagar Shah, have stated that Raina played a key role in popularizing chess in India. His use of comedy to explain and discuss the game is widely seen as the reason he reached such a large, mainstream audience. His channel has hosted a roster of chess legends, including former world champions Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, Garry Kasparov, and Magnus Carlsen, as well as player Judit Polgár.

Beyond chess, Raina has expanded his content to live streams of many other games. He has also appeared in music videos for Indian hip-hop artists, featuring in tracks by Seedhe Maut, KRSNA, and Raftaar.

Chess Achievements and Initiatives

Samay Raina is an active chess player on Chess.com under the username M Master samayraina, also known by the moniker Blunder Master. As of 5 May 2026, his rapid chess rating on the platform was 1621, with his highest recorded rating being 1942 on 3 August 2026. He has competed in and won notable online tournaments. On 5 May 2021, he won the $10,000 Botez Bullet Invitational, a one-hour amateur bullet arena tournament sponsored by Chess.com and hosted by the Botez sisters. As the only Indian streamer in a field of top international Twitch streamers, he earned $4000 for his victory.

In December 2025, he won the SuperPogChamps tournament hosted by chess.com, which featured 12 global influencers including Andrea Botez and Sardoche. By winning the Championship Bracket, Raina earned the top prize of $10,000, approximately Rs 8.9 lakh at the time. He donated this entire prize money to the Lidè Haiti foundation to support learning, health, and well-being for Haitian girls.

Raina has also been a driving force behind organized chess events for his audience. He created Comedians on Board (COB), online chess tournaments designed to attract an online audience by inviting his comedian friends and other celebrities to play. In a larger competitive venture, he collaborated with ChessBase India and Nodwin Gaming to organize the Chess Super League. This online league featured top international and Indian Grandmasters, International Masters, and Indian junior players, competing in six teams of six players each for a prize pool of ₹40 lakh, or about US$42,000. The entire event was streamed on Raina's YouTube channel.

His streams have served charitable purposes, raising substantial funds for causes such as aid for waste pickers and relief for victims of floods in West Bengal and Assam.

Major Comedy Projects and Tours

Following his Comicstaan victory, Raina continued to develop his stand-up career. In 2023, he performed at the launch party for American DJ KSHMR's album KARAM at the antiSOCIAL venue in Mumbai. In 2025, he announced a major nationwide comedy tour titled Still Alive And Unfiltered. This tour was positioned as a comeback following the controversy surrounding his show India's Got Latent. The tour commenced in Bengaluru on 15 August 2025 and concluded in Delhi on 5 October 2025.

In 2026, Raina reached a career milestone by becoming one of the youngest Indian comedians to perform at Madison Square Garden, where he closed the global leg of his tour. On 7 March 2026, after an almost year-long hiatus from YouTube, he released his debut comedy special, Still Alive, on the platform. The special became the most viewed stand-up comedy special on YouTube.

In June 2026, he announced two major collaborations with Netflix India. The first was the second season of his show India's Got Latent, which would stream on both Netflix and YouTube. The second was a new stand-up special for the platform. In August 2026, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis felicitated Raina for his contribution to the cyber-awareness short film Digital Arrest and the 1930 Maharashtra Cyber Anthem, both produced by the Maharashtra Cyber Cell.

India's Got Latent and Digital Ventures

In June 2024, Samay Raina launched a new reality show titled India's Got Latent, focused on uncovering hidden talents across the country. The show initially aired on his YouTube channel. Building on the show's concept, Raina ventured into the tech and entertainment space by launching a dedicated mobile app also called India's Got Latent. He expressed a long-term aim to transition the platform into a full-fledged over-the-top (OTT) service, featuring original shows across genres like poetry, rap, and reality TV. The app was an immediate success, reaching the top of the download charts on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store within hours of its launch.

The show, however, became the source of a significant legal and public relations crisis in early 2025. On 10 February 2025, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma tweeted that the Guwahati Police had registered a first information report against Raina and other prominent YouTubers, including Ashish Chanchlani, Jaspreet Singh, Apoorva Makhija, and Ranveer Allahbadia. They were accused of promoting obscenity and engaging in sexually explicit and vulgar discussions on India's Got Latent.

The specific trigger was a segment where guest Ranveer Allahbadia asked a contestant a hypothetical question about parental incest. Chief Minister Sarma stated the case was filed under various sections of the new BNS 2023, the IT Act 2000, the Cinematograph Act 1952, and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act 1986, and that a police investigation was ongoing. The issue was raised during the Zero Hour in the Indian Parliament, sparking debates about regulating digital platforms like YouTube. Following objections from the National Human Rights Commission, the controversial video was removed. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also publicly condemned the comments made on the show. The controversy ultimately led to the removal of India's Got Latent from YouTube.

Controversies and Public Scrutiny

Samay Raina has faced public backlash on multiple occasions. In 2022, amid the overturning of the US Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, Raina tweeted a joke concerning abortion rights. The joke was poorly received by many online. Critics labeled the joke as misogynist or simply not funny, while Raina defended himself by blaming the negative reaction on cancel culture.

The more serious and complex controversy arose from the India's Got Latent incident in February 2025. The police case filed in Guwahati accused him and his guests of violating several laws concerning obscenity and the representation of women. The involvement of a state chief minister and the discussion in Parliament highlighted the growing scrutiny of digital content creators in India. The condemnation from political figures like Devendra Fadnavis and the intervention of the National Human Rights Commission demonstrated the severity with which authorities viewed the content. This episode not only resulted in the removal of his show but also cast a shadow over his projects, prompting his announced comedy tour to be framed as a comeback.