Carl Pei adopts the nickname ‘Bhai’ before the launch of Nothing Phone 2a, with involvement from Elon Musk and Perplexity CEO
In anticipation of the release of Nothing Phone 2a on March 5, Nothing CEO Carl Pei captured the interest of the company’s Indian fans with the introduction of a new ‘Bhai’ campaign. What initially started as a humorous interaction between a user named X and Pei, evolved into the CEO responding to X’s posts with ‘Bhai’ – a term in Hindi meaning ‘brother’.
Carl Pei in X
In the past few days, there has been speculation that Nothing would hire Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh as its brand ambassador. One X user asked the same to Carl Pei, to which Nothing’s CEO replied, “We want to sell more phones bhai,” surprising the company’s Indian followers on the microblogging platform. Another user later called Pei “Bhai”, then changed his handle to “Carl Bhai”.
Nothing India’s official X account followed suit and changed its handle to ‘Nothing India Bhai’ and also posted the message ‘Carl Bhai ke Aage koi Bol sakta hai kya, ayyy Carl Bhai’. The banter continued, and Nothing founder Akis Evangelidis also changed his handle to “Akis Bhai”.
Not only his co-founder, but also Carl Pei got involved with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, the latter replying to Pei’s original message “Carl Bhai, kab hamara partnership?” Pei replied, “Only if you change your name to Aravind Bhai,” to which Srinivas replied, “Partnership Authority now!”, while briefly changing his X-handle.
This prank caught the attention of Indian users, with many requesting the integration of Perplexity on Nothing devices. One user wrote: “It’s time to exploit the artificial intelligence part of Bh’AI as empty devices”.
The former OnePlus co-founder also persuaded X boss Elon Musk to change his handle. Pei wrote: “.@elonmusk Did you really think you could build a Tesla factory in India without changing your username to Elon Bhai?”
While this is just a tease, it’s a great marketing tool for the company to anticipate the launch of its latest smartphone, the Nothing Phone 2a. India has already become a good market for Nothing, and the company has also set up its manufacturing facility in Chennai, where its flagship Nothing Phone 2 is manufactured.
