Meet Chalibro, the digital Doctor curing boredom with his ‘Chali’ jokes

Bengaluru

Meet Chalibro or Nihal Nair, if you’re looking at his medical school ID. He is a Chennai-based intern doctor on weekdays and a prolific digital content creator at weekends. Despite his growing follower base nearing 105k on Instagram, the 24-year-old maintains a highly grounded approach to the creator economy. He treats content creation as a fulfilling creative outlet rather than a full-time commercial pursuit, ensuring that his content remains authentic, spontaneous, and deeply rooted in the everyday experiences of his South Indian audience.

Chalibro’s superpower is the chali (a word in Malayalam slang for lame joke) - the kind of deliberately terrible, spectacularly corny pun that makes you groan out loud before secretly sending it to five friends. He isn’t chasing polished, hyper-produced viral trends; instead, he captures the spontaneous, unfiltered comedy of hanging out with your friends at a mall or procrastinating before a massive exam.

Always been humorous 
“I’ve been cracking jokes since the seventh grade, and during my Class 11 days I would post guitar cover videos on Instagram”, Nihal recalled in an exclusive interview with News Trail. He shared that his love for humour and making people laugh gradually evolved into content creation. What began with jokes in Malayalam and English has now expanded into Tamil content as well, while he also hopes to learn Kannada in the future. Nihal also revealed that even before his current online presence, he had experimented with content creation through a YouTube channel where he uploaded magic trick videos.

According to him, that phase introduced him to video recording and editing at a very young age. “The first video I posted with my friends got around two lakh views. That’s when I realised I should continue posting consistently”, he said, recalling how he later experimented with wordplay-based videos filmed inside IKEA. That journey eventually led to his breakthrough viral moment - a planned comedy video shot inside Kochi Lulu Mall that crossed one million views online.

Chalibro is Nihal Nair
Off-screen too, Nihal says he is much like his online persona - extroverted, energetic and constantly cracking “lame jokes” in conversations. His love for meeting people is also why he frequently travels to cities such as Bengaluru and Mumbai during long weekends to collaborate with fellow creators. “It’s difficult balancing both, but I genuinely enjoy it. That’s why I plan and shoot my videos and collaborations in advance”, he explained.

He added that he enjoys collaborating with creators irrespective of their niche or follower count, as he believes in growing together as a community. However, the journey has not been without criticism. Nihal admitted that some of his religious jokes have attracted severe backlash and even death threats online. “A lot of people don’t see it as just humour”, he said, adding that he also tries to subtly communicate certain messages through his content and the algorithm-driven space of social media.

A lot of medicine and media
Looking ahead, Nihal hopes to continue creating comedy content while also exploring educational content related to medicine. “I would like to start another account to teach medicine online. A lot of what I’ve learnt through both medicine and media could be useful there”, he said. Offering advice to aspiring creators, Nihal stressed the importance of consistency. He shared that one of the reasons he began posting online was to discipline himself and stay accountable. “Try to be consistent in whatever you do, and you can achieve it”, he said.