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Meet This Week’s Guest on Mental Health Bytes: Vibhu Kashyap

This week on Mental Health Bytes, we are joined by the brilliant Vibhu Kashyap — a director, writer, and creative strategist whose work has helped reshape India’s storytelling landscape. Based in Mumbai and originally from Allahabad, Vibhu built his career from the ground up, arriving in the city without a safety net and moving homes fifteen times in just two and a half years. That journey of instability, grit, and self-belief became the foundation of the emotional intelligence that now defines his art.

With nearly two decades of experience across Bollywood, OTT platforms, and high-impact advertising, Vibhu is known for his instinctive approach to storytelling and his willingness to take creative risks. He served as Senior Creative Director for the acclaimed psychological thriller series Asur: Welcome to Your Dark Side, a groundbreaking blend of Indian mythology and forensic science that went on to earn an IMDb rating of 8.5 and redefine the Indian OTT thriller space. His early years as Assistant Director on iconic films like Main Hoon Na, Dor, and Iqbal shaped his understanding of emotional pacing and character-driven narratives.

He later directed the feature film NRI Wives, an anthology exploring the inner emotional worlds of Non-Resident Indian women. His work across OTT — including Crackdown, It’s Not That Simple, and Yo Ke Hua Bro — shows his range across espionage, relationship drama, and comedy. In advertising, Vibhu created one of India’s longest-running thermal wear commercials, a campaign that ran for thirteen years, and he continues to lend his voice to heartfelt, storytelling-led brand narratives.

At the core of Vibhu’s creative philosophy is a refusal to be boxed in by format. To him, emotional truth matters more than medium. He directs with empathy rather than ego, building characters shaped by real human complexity, moral conflict, and emotional turbulence. His “say yes first, figure it out later” approach has inspired a generation of young creators, encouraging them to trust their chaos and take ownership of their craft.

Vibhu Kashyap’s journey matters because it represents the resilience of an artist who carved his path through uncertainty while staying deeply connected to human emotion. His work champions survivor-informed storytelling, pushes the boundaries of genre, and offers powerful insights into how creativity, trauma, and healing intersect.

This week, he joins Mental Health Bytes with Dr. Aninda Sidhana and RAH (MrTraumaTalks) for an unforgettable conversation about art, psychology, emotional depth, and the stories that shape us.