Mumbai, Aug 21 (TIWN) At the age of 14 when Rinku Rajguru made her debut in a Marathi film, she did not know its end result. She did not know that her debut film "Sairat" would become a successful film of her time with a huge box-office collection and multiple awards.

The 39-year-old is among a group of web series newcomers, including Aaditi Pohankar and Rinku Rajguru, whose fortunes changed in 2020 when the film industry faced one of the harshest blow dealt by the pandemic. The entertainment industry saw the pendulum swing towards OTT as audiences, wary of venturing out, turned to the internet for entertainment. In a year which also saw film actors, like Abhishek Bachchan (Breathe: Into the Shadows), Arshad Warsi (Asur) and Lara Dutta (Hundred), jump on the OTT bandwagon, it was still the underdogs who made the biggest impression. “The kind of penetration OTT has is mind-numbing,” says Divyenndu, perhaps one of the first few to experience stardom on the platform courtesy his dynamic act as gangster Munna Tripathi in the Amazon Prime show Mirzapur 1 and 2. Fans of Munna Bhaiyya Telugu Fan Club have celebrated the character by pouring milk on its cutout while message boards are rampant with crazy theories about Munna’s fate. Divyenndu had made his feature debut with Pyaar Ka Punchnama, but Mirzapur, he says, “gave us instant success. Its impact is more visible.” Apart from Divyenndu, the show has also made his co-stars Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Rasika Dugal, Shweta Tripathi Sharma popular.