IFTA 2026, India’s only people’s choice film and television awards — voting open

Munawar Faruqui Won Most Popular OTT Debut With 40%, Powered by Men

By Karan Dutta

Updated on November 3, 2026
IST 10:23 am

Six in ten men voted for him. His First Copy co-star Ashi Singh came second, carried by women.

First Copy took six in ten votes

Seven debutants were on the ballot for Most Popular OTT Debut at IFTA 2026.

Munawar Faruqui (First Copy) won with 708 of 1,748 verified votes, 40.5%. The runner-up, Ashi Singh (First Copy), got 20.7%. The winner’s share was about twice the runner-up’s.

First Copy had two debutants on the ballot, Munawar Faruqui and Ashi Singh. Together they took 61.2% of the vote. Nana Patekar (Sankalp) was third with 18.6%.

Munawar Faruqui, winner of Most Popular OTT Debut at IFTA 2026

Who decided it

Every IFTA vote is OTP-verified, one per WhatsApp number per category, and every voter’s age and gender is recorded at sign-up. So this is not a survey sample. It is the full count of who voted.

Women cast 1,195 of the 1,748 votes (68%). Munawar Faruqui won 31.5% of women’s votes and 59.9% of men’s.
Voters under 25 cast 72% of all votes. The biggest single group was voters aged 18–24 (933 votes).
Men aged 25–34 were Munawar Faruqui’s strongest group: 65.3% of their 193 votes went to Munawar Faruqui.
44% of Munawar Faruqui’s votes came from women under 25 (311 of 708).

This winner looks different from most IFTA winners. Men aged 25 and over gave Munawar Faruqui 23.2% of his votes, about as many as men under 25. In most categories, women under 25 dominate the winner’s vote.

With 1,748 votes, this is one of the smaller IFTA 2026 categories, so read the smaller groups (such as voters over 45) with care.

Same winner, different second choices

Men backed Munawar Faruqui overwhelmingly: 59.9% of their votes. Women were split: 31.5% for Munawar and 26.8% for Ashi Singh.

Yukti Thareja: 3.3% of women’s votes, 2.0% of men’s, 1.7 times as popular with women.

Across IFTA 2026

Men cast 31% of the votes here, one of the highest male shares across all 30 IFTA 2026 categories.

In the voters’ own words

Voters could add a reason with their vote. A few of them:

“Favorite munawar Faruqui”
“He is a very multi talented man and he is inspirasion for every man”
“He’s a great actor 😁😊”

This is not a ratings chart or a critics’ list. It measures which audience turned up to vote, and how hard.

See the full results

IFTA 2026 voting has closed and the results are in. No jury, no award fixing: every winner was decided by India’s votes. See the full Most Popular OTT Debut result, or all results: Bollywood · OTT · Television

All vote figures from the IFTA 2026 Most Popular OTT Debut results on PolBol (1,748 verified votes, results final). Group figures are as published there; combined totals are added up from the published counts. Nominee images: IFTA 2026.