It may have been a month since the final episode of his latest work, the Disney Plus Hotstar action drama Lootere released, but Jai Mehta says words of appreciation continue to pour in. “I am humbled. It has been interesting to see the reaction because it wasn’t a conventional show. It does not [cater to] the target audience of the web platform. But the response has been reaffirming—the audience watches everything, and we can’t take them for granted,” he says.

Lootere, which chronicled the tale of the hijacking of an Indian ship by Somali pirates, marked Mehta’s independent feature debut after co-directing the 2020 Pratik Gandhi-starrer show, Scam 1992, with his filmmaker-father Hansal Mehta. For Mehta junior, the audience’s reception of Lootere was crucial, as he believes this project is a fitting reflection of his vision as a storyteller.