General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Class of 2017

Class of 2017 is a 2017 Hindi-language teen drama web series created and produced by Vikas Gupta for ALTBalaji, the video on demand platform of Ekta Kapoor's Balaji Telefilms. It follows a group of school students whose lives become entangled with drugs, sex, peer pressure, and anxiety, and it is loosely based on the 1990s television series Hip Hip Hurray.¹⁵

Key fact	Detail
Platform	ALTBalaji, the streaming service of Balaji Telefilms; also carried on Vodafone Play¹
Release	Listed as 12 July 2017, though other databases give late June or early July 2017²
Direction	Suyash Vadhavkar, with Dipti Kalwani also credited as a director²
Basis	Loosely based on Hip Hip Hurray¹⁵
Recognition	Best Screenplay, IWM Digital Awards³

Spoilers

Premise and storytelling

Producer Vikas Gupta described it as a coming-of-age story of teenagers discovering their identity and the meaning of friendship, life, and love, with a storytelling technique in which each episode shows the world through the eyes of one character.⁴ The show's own promotional synopsis framed the stakes plainly: "Peer pressure, anxiety, drugs, sex, and raging hormones. Life is tough when you are 16, can these eight teens attain adulthood unharmed?"⁵

Sequel and availability

The sequel series Class of 2020 began streaming on ALTBalaji on 4 February 2020, continuing the coming-of-age format with a new ensemble of teenage characters facing drugs, relationships, sex, and peer pressure.¹¹ Availability of the original season has shifted over time: aggregator listings have variously placed it on ALTBalaji, Vodafone Play, and MX Player, and JustWatch reported in a recent crawl that no streaming offer for season 1 was available in India.¹²^•¹⁰

Production and platform context

ALTBalaji's first year. The series was produced by Lost Boy Productions, the company behind youth programming such as Channel [V]'s Gumrah, MTV Webbed, and Warrior High.⁴ Its parent platform, ALTBalaji, was launched by Balaji Telefilms in April 2017 with original shows in Hindi and other Indian languages, and Balaji Telefilms' quarterly report for the period lists Class of 2017 among the original shows added in the quarter, alongside Cybersquad and Pammi Aunty.¹ In September 2017, Vodafone became the first telecom operator to partner with ALTBalaji, carrying its originals, including Class of 2017, on the Vodafone Play app.⁶

Vikas Gupta, who created and produced the series under Lost Boy Productions, had earlier been the youngest programming head of MTV and went on to create Puncch Beat (2019) and Class of 2020 (2020).⁷

Reception

Critical response was negative. Devarsi Ghosh, reviewing the series for Scroll in July 2017, wrote that the basic fundamentals of good writing, interesting characters, and a story to care about were missing, and described the production as looking cheap, with a school that appears to have one teacher and a five-a-side football final on a tiny ground.⁸ Ghosh noted that the show had six writers and argued that shoehorning themes of peer pressure, drug abuse, body-shaming, and bullying made it relevant only on paper.⁸ Megha Mathur of The Quint called the series "not even a patch on Hip Hip Hurray" and argued that it presented a distorted definition of what is bold and cool for young viewers, with school life, curiosity, and friendship largely absent from the characterizations.⁹

Audience aggregates were more favorable: JustWatch lists an IMDb rating of 7.3 for season 1 based on 432 votes, and MyMovieRack records a user rating of 3.7 out of 5 from 571 ratings.¹⁰^•⁵ The series also received industry recognition, winning Best Screenplay at the IWM Digital Awards according to Balaji Telefilms' 2017-18 annual report.³

Conflicting records

Reference sources disagree on several basic details, and the differences are worth noting for readers checking facts. The release date appears as 12 July 2017 in one detailed listing, as 30 June 2017 on Digit Binge,² as 1 July 2017 on IMDb,¹³ and as 5 July 2017 on Webisoda.¹¹ Episode counts also differ: the detailed episode list and JustWatch both count 20 episodes,¹⁰ while Scroll's review describes ten episodes of under 16 minutes each,⁸ and TheTVDB splits the season into two blocks of ten.¹⁴ Running times are given as 14 to 22 minutes, about 21 minutes,¹⁰ or an average of 15 minutes,¹⁴ depending on the source.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Indian and South Asian web series › Premiered 2003 to 2020

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?