Bollywood starlet Sunny Leone will complete seven years in the Indian film industry this month, and her star has never been brighter.
She's made a name for herself, from an Indian origin adult film star in the West to a blockbuster movie star in Bollywood, and India seemingly can't get enough. And there's data to prove India's obsession of Sunny Leone.
Sunny Leone/Twitter
Karenjit Kaur Vohra's first starring role in Bollywood was Jism 2, back on 2012, though she did technically appear in the fifth season of Bigg Boss a year earlier. And ever since then, she's really had Indians interested in her.
For instance a quick dive into Google Trends' analytics shows that Narendra Modi is quite a popular search on a daily basis. And yet, Sunny Leone searches are made about twice as much on average.?
The Canadian-born Indian-American actress started off as a glamour model and pornstar, which is probably part of the reason audiences were so excited when she appeared on Indian mainstream television.
In the years since, she's become an instantly recognisable face of pop culture and modern Indian zeitgeist, with a popularity rivaling (if not better than) Indian cricketing stars.
For instance, take a look at that chart and compare the searches of Sunny Leone with MS Dhoni. See that single occasion where he seemed to briefly be more popular than her? That's when someone released a biopic about him. That bought him about a month at the top.
And she seems to be most popular in the eastern regions of the country. The top five states searching for her on the regular are Manipur, Assam, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, and Bihar. And based on related queries, most people are either searching for the videos of her songs, or photos and wallpapers of her.
YouTube statistics are a little harder to get a hold of, but we know for a fact Sunny Leone was already really popular on the site a few years ago. Back in 2014, her music video for 'Baby Doll' was the top trending video in India, gaining over 40 million views.
Don't get me wrong, plenty of Indian actresses are popular searches at any given time. But the margin of popularity greatly differs. For instance, we checked out the search popularity of the likes of Deepika Padukone, Kangana Ranaut, Priyanka Chopra, And Jahnvi Kapoor. And then we compared them to those of Sunny. To say there's a gulf there would be an understatement.
But it's not just her acting peers, Sunny Leone's attention base has also far outstripped that of global issues and matters that should be concerning all of India. Take for instance the comparison between searches of the starlet and topics like water shortage, climate change, and pollution. All global issues, and all important even on the Indian stage.
Heck, even comparing her popularity to Income Tax searches is useless. In fact, the data indicates no one even cared about ITR filing until they got the first notification early in July, and then a reminder at the end of the month.
If you look at the graph, Sunny Leone continues to dominate search traffic in India, despite having recently diversified into her own makeup line, as well as other ventures beyond Bollywood appearances.
And from all indication, her star will continue headlining Indian search traffic for some more time to come.