According to Khan, Chalte Chalte was meant to be a sweet homely film in the genre of Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee films. "Remember how Amol Palekar's films used to steal into theatres in the 1970s? Chalte Chalte is a working-class romantic comedy. It came quietly and became a sleeper hit."

Khan, who starred in Devdas, one of the biggest success of 2002, says he was confident Chalte Chalte would get a big opening: "After all, it was my first release in a year. But we never overplayed our cards. We never said Chalte Chalte is the greatest show on earth, but a nice way to spend an evening. It is a difficult film to define. You can only prove what you have in mind by making it. In theory, it sounds like a run-of-the-mill, incident-based film like Hollywood's romantic comedies."