Naveen Kasturia

Naveen Kasturia (born 26 January 1985) is an Indian actor known for his work in Breathe: Into the Shadows, TVF Pitchers and Aspirants.^[1] He made his acting debut with the critically acclaimed Sulemani Keeda. He is considered one of the most popular OTT actors with 3 of his web shows in the IMDb Top 250 TV shows list.

Naveen Kasturia
Born	(1984-01-26) 26 January 1984 (age 41) Otukpo, Benue State, Nigeria
Alma mater	Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology University of Delhi
Occupation	Actor
Years active	2009-present
Known for	TVF Pitchers Bose: Dead/Alive TVF Aspirants Breathe into the shadows
Spouse	Shubhanjali Sharma ​ (m. 2024)​

He started his career working as an assistant director on the film Jashnn and then assisted Dibakar Banerjee on Love Sex Aur Dhokha and Shanghai. He also appeared in Bose: Dead/Alive and played leading roles in Waah Zindagi, Thinkistan, Happily Ever After and Runaway Lugai.

Early life

Naveen was born in Otukpo, a small town in Nigeria. His family moved back to India when he was a year old. He was brought up in a joint family in Delhi. He did his schooling from Birla Vidya Niketan and engineering in Manufacturing Process & Automation from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (now NSUT) in Delhi.^[2]

He directed a lot of skits/plays in his school and college days. After graduation, he joined an analytics firm called Inductis in Gurgaon in 2006, where he worked for two years before moving to Mumbai in 2008. In Mumbai, he worked with JP Morgan Chase for a very brief period of time before making a final switch to films.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

He married his girlfriend, Shubhanjali Sharma in Udaipur, on 3 December 2024.^[3][4]

Career

Naveen continued doing theatre after engineering. In 2007, Naveen and his college friends started a theatre company, Right Click Entertainment, and wrote and directed his first ticketed play Khel Khel Mein, which went houseful. He worked as an assistant director in Jashnn, produced by Vishesh Films.^{[citation needed]}

Naveen got his first television commercial when he went to meet Dibakar Banerjee since he wanted to assist Dibakar Banerjee as an AD, and Banerjee asked him to work in his coke commercial. As of now, Naveen Kasturia has worked in many advertisements for various brands such as Vodafone, Mahindra, Tapzo app, Marathe Jewellers, True Value and so on. Later, he assisted Dibakar Banerjee in LSD and Shanghai, and Oscar-winning director Danis Tanović in an international film called Tigers.^{[citation needed]}

In 2011, Amit Masurkar offered a movie to Kasturia, named Sulemani Keeda. Released in 2014, the movie proved to be a turning point in his career. Naveen did a few more sketches with The Viral Fever before Pitchers happened.^[5]

In 2022, he also appeared in a podcast on Spotify, 'Bhaskar Bose: A Hindi Thriller Podcast' (season 3 – 'Bhaskar Bose in a Perfect World' ) playing the role of Bhaskar Bose from a Parallel World. The podcast was created by MNM Talkies.

Filmography

Key

†	Denotes films / dramas that are not yet released

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes	Ref.
2009	Jashnn	Assistant director
2010	Love Sex Aur Dhokha
2012	Shanghai	Ranjan	also assistant director
2014	Tigers	Assistant director
	Sulemani Keeda	Dulal		[6]
2016	Loveshhuda	Kunal
2018	Hope Aur Hum	Nitin		[7]
	Turtle	—
2019	Waah Zindagi	Ashok	ZEE5 film	[8]

Web series

Year	Title	Role	Platform	Notes	Ref.
2013	Chai Sutta Chronicles	Siddharth	TVF
2015–present	TVF Pitchers	Naveen Bansal	TVF ZEE5		[9]
2015	Man's World	Bus passenger	YFilms	Guest appearance
2017	Social Series	Prithvi	Viu
	Bose: Dead/Alive	Darbari Lal	ALTBalaji
2018	The Good Vibes	Lakshya Tripathi	YouTube
2019	Fuh se Fantasy	Sushil	Voot	Episode
	Thinkistan	Amit	MX Player		[10]
	Happily Ever After	Roneet Bagchi	Zoom Studios
	Parchhayee	Jimmy	ZEE5
2021	Aapkey Kamrey Mein Koi Rahta Hai	Subbu	MX Player
	Pati Patni Aur Panga	Romanchak Arora	MX Player		[11]
2021–present	TVF Aspirants	Abhilash Sharma	TVF Amazon Prime Video		[12][13][14]
2021	Runaway Lugai[15][16][17]	Rajnikant Sinha	MX Player
2021–present	Kota Factory	Dhruv	Netflix		[18]
2022	Breathe: Into the Shadows 2	Victor Bahl	Amazon Prime Video
	TVF Pitchers 2	Naveen Bansal	ZEE5
2023	SK Sir Ki Class	IAS Abhilash Sharma	YouTube	Guest appearance
	TVF Aspirants 2	IAS Abhilash Sharma	Amazon Prime Video
	Sapne vs Everyone	Sumit sir (Music Teacher)	YouTube
2024	Mithya: The Darker Chapter	-	ZEE5	[19]

Short films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2013	Skin Deep	Sanjay
2014	Interior Cafe Night	Young Boy
2014	Stunt Boy	Robin
2015	Chhoti Khushi	Elder son	SonyLIV film
2016	Pure-Veg	Arjun
2016	Half Ticket	Ayaan
2018	Half Ticket 2	Ayaan
2018	Maya	Raunak
2018	Sone Bhi Do Yaaron	Naveen	Zee5 film
2022	Tasalli se	Rajan
2022	Pehli Baar Hum Mile (music video)	Naveen Khanna