YouTuber Savukku Shankar mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay interaction with people during the inaugural metro ride from Porur to Poonamallee, dismissing the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm as “acting”. However, an account shared by an AI startup founder who participated in the interaction offers a different perspective on what happened during the journey.
During the metro ride, Modi interacted with 16-17 startup founders and gave them an opportunity to present their ideas. According to one of the participants, the Prime Minister listened to their pitches and asked questions about their proposals.
In a video, Savukku Shankar ridiculed Modi’s conversation with a woman explaining the metro rail project, suggesting that the Prime Minister was pretending to be impressed by details that would ordinarily be familiar to people involved in the project.
Addressing Vijay, Shankar said, “You might command a salary of 200 crores per film. You might have starred in numerous movies and won the hearts of the people. But Modi made it clear to Vijay that he couldn’t compete with him when it comes to acting.”
He went on to mock Modi’s alleged questions about the metro route and the train’s operation, claiming that even the chief designer of the project would not display such exaggerated enthusiasm while explaining it.
His associate Malathi joined in, commenting on the metro route and saying that Modi would not even know the area after Kodambakkam and Vadapalani.
Another associate imagined Vijay thinking that Modi was “acting even better” than him.
Shankar continued the lies and sarcasm, claiming that Modi immersed himself in every role he played, whether visiting a laboratory in Hyderabad in a personal protective equipment (PPE) kit or visiting the Ram Temple with sandalwood paste on his forehead.
Mocking the Prime Minister’s public appearances, Shankar said Modi behaved like a scientist in a laboratory and a devout Hindu at the temple, suggesting that these were performances designed to impress people.
He even portrayed Modi as being so impressed by Vijay’s acting that he had supposedly decided to give up any future plans of acting in films after witnessing the Chief Minister’s natural ease during the metro ride.
But nothing could be further from the truth. PM Modi was interacting with startup founders from Tamil Nadu. One of them was the founder of a firm named Thazhal, which uses satellites to monitor the progress of road and bridge construction. Nearly 16–17 startup founders interacted with PM Modi.
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Startup Founder Shares Experience of Meeting PM Modi
However, Tejas Parthasarathy, the founder of an AI platform who participated in the interaction, shared his experience in an Instagram post, describing the opportunity to present ideas to the Prime Minister as a memorable moment.
Parthasarathy recalled how, in 2017, he had stood before his school to deliver a speech during the School Pupil Leader elections. One of the ideas he proposed was introducing Google Classroom to help students learn better through technology.
Nearly nine years later, in 2026, he found himself presenting ideas to Modi on making India’s students more AI-native.
“I was shortlisted for an interaction with the Prime Minister and given 90 seconds to present two ideas for India. Ninety seconds isn’t a lot of time, especially when you have a million things you’d love to say, but it was an absolutely wonderful experience!” he wrote.
Reflecting on the moment, Parthasarathy said the experience brought his journey from a schoolboy advocating the use of technology in education to an entrepreneur discussing India’s AI future full circle.
“It’s funny how some things come full circle. The technology has changed enormously, the scale of the problems we’re trying to solve has changed, and I’ve certainly grown a little older (and hopefully wiser!), but somewhere, the curiosity that made a schoolboy stand up and talk about Google Classroom hasn’t changed very much,” he wrote.
He also expressed gratitude for the opportunity and the people who had contributed to his journey, adding that the experience had reminded him to appreciate how far he had come.
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Prime Minister Modi is a politician whom even NTK chief Seeman has described as a “24/7 politician”. Known for making the most of his time, Modi is widely reported to work long hours, catch up on sleep during flights, and use travel time for official work and meetings. So, when 16–17 startup founders were given an opportunity to pitch their ideas to him during the metro ride, there was substance to the interaction beyond the cameras.
But Savukku Shankar for a few laughs and engagement would rather turn it into a cheap comedy sketch about acting. While young entrepreneurs were using those precious minutes to discuss ideas for India’s future, Shankar was busy imagining Modi auditioning for a film role. The Prime Minister used the journey to engage with founders; Shankar used it to manufacture a punchline. For all his elaborate commentary about acting, he has conspicuously little to say about the actual ideas presented on that train.
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