Kabita Singh, a content creator is known for her engaging content on YouTube and Instagram. Singh is particularly famous for her recipe videos, where she showcases traditional Indian recipes in an easy-to-follow manner. Singh’s content is characterized by its simplicity and authenticity, making her relatable to viewers from different walks of life. Her popularity has earned her a large following, with over 13 million subscribers on YouTube and over 1 million followers on Instagram. Besides cooking, Kabita also creates content on various other topics, such as lifestyle, travel, and DIY. In a chat with the dynamic content creator, we understand what it takes to captivate audiences with creativity and authenticity and helm a new masala brand.
Question 1: What made you start your own YouTube channel and how engaging it is with your consumer?
Kabita: I enjoyed cooking since my childhood, I used to help my mother in the kitchen as a kid. Life moved on and my passion of cooking took back seat due to college and later due to job. In 2009, I got married and moved to the UK, I took break from job. While in the UK, I started nurturing my passion for cooking, I started trying variety of recipes from many cuisines. I returned to India in 2014. When my son started going to school, I had some free time and I decided to nurture my passion for cooking further rather than looking for a job again because I wanted to give my time to my son. In November 2014, I created my YouTube channel, my focus was to create recipes which covers every minor detail of cooking so that anyone can follow my recipes. My primary focus was creating recipes for people who know little or nothing about cooking. I didn’t have professional cameras, lights or setup but decided to start with it thinking that basic setup (my home kitchen) will be more relatable to my viewers. I was determined to make my videos useful hence I decided to reply to every comment on the channel, idea was to learn and improve from the feedback. Looking back, I feel that replying to every comment and incorporating viewer’s feedback was one of main reasons viewers started relating to my channel more. I felt (still do) that viewers are the most important stakeholders of my channel, and I could sense from the comments that viewers also felt that it’s their own channel. They gave feedback, suggestion and requested certain recipes, I tried to make sure that almost every feedback, suggestion and request is incorporated.
Question 2: How challenging is it to be consistent with making new videos and recipes every week/month?
Kabita: To start with, it was easy because target was basic cooking for beginners, a few months later I started experimenting to simplifying certain restaurant style recipes and recipes from other cuisines. After first few years, there was a phase where coming up with ideas started feeling a little challenging. I thought about it and felt that I need to put some method around my process of making and posting recipes. I decided to post videos on a fixed schedule, ever since I have been posting videos on every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. On deciding what to post next, I decided to take following consideration in account.
- Recipes requested by viewers
- Seasonal and festival recipes
- Recipes which are in trend
- Recipes which I love cooking
Keeping above in mind I have been able to create enough recipes to keep my schedule going.
Question 3: What is a usual day like in the life of a content creator and how different it is from an entrepreneur?
Kabita: As a content creator you are always at it, you are either researching, creating or interacting with viewers, this makes a content creators job 24*7. Being an entrepreneur is equally challenging to start in my view, the bright side is (at-least I hope so) that after a stage you may offset a lot of work as you scale your business. As a content creator, you are the product because of which you will end up doing most parts of the work regardless how big you grow. I am enjoying the start of my journey as an entrepreneur because I am passionate about it and it is a natural extension of my content creation journey. Additionally, having a partner like India Food Network is allowing me to focus on creative part of the business and they are taking care of other aspects of it.
Question 4: How do you partner with brands today? How does it help to promote your own Masala brand; Kabita’s Kitchen Masala Mix?
Kabita: Brands use creators for multiplicity of reasons – reach, authenticity, brand fit and our connect with audiences. I think my channel fits to all of these parameters because of which I work with many brands to promote the products I believe in. I don’t like to promote certain category of brands such a betting/gambling etc. I continue to work with a multiplicity of brands with whom we have long term and, in some cases, new partnerships with.
I do not believe in hard selling; it has never been my style. Wherever, I see my own brand organically fitting in my recipes I organically integrate it in that particular recipe. In addition to our launch on Amazon, we also launched our brand in modern commerce (Smart Bazar and Smart Store to start with). My partners at IFN came up with this creative idea of launching the products in Smart store and Smart bazar with a meet and greet. This has made this more enjoyable, I love meeting and interacting with my fans and sharing that experience on my YouTube channel and Instagram handle.
The experience of working with brands is certainly very helpful in promoting my own brand and I am excited to bring our own learning’s to help brands connect in more meaningful ways with their target consumers.
Question 5: So many content creators are live-streaming their personal lives? How do you think that helps build a profile/ brand?
Kabita: One of the great things that social media has brought is that fans can genuinely get involve and interact with creators/celebrities, though it comes with its own challenges. I don’t live stream my personal life but I do share my travel experiences, special life moments, milestones and virtual meet and great (through YouTube live steam and Instagram live).
I think live streaming make viewers feel more connected with creators, they feel that are part of life of the creator’s life. This bond between creator and viewers helps in building a profile/brand.
Question 6: Tell us more about your newly launched Masala brand: The launch and the market response to it? How do you plan to promote it now and what are your plans for the future?
Kabita: During COVID, I was focused mostly on content creation, I use to get comments (also realized personally) that spices weren’t easily available to people during pandemic. If a recipe required 3-4 masalas, some were not available with viewers. This made me think that if there were self-sufficient blends, it could simply make cooking and shopping of spices easier. I decided to foray into the category and partnered with India Food Network, as they understand the market better. I am responsible for making the spices and organically promoting it through my recipes. We have launched 3 blends at the moment: Sabzi Masala, Chicken Masala and Pav Bhaji Masala, these are self-sufficient, people using our blends don’t have to add any other masala not even turmeric or chilli powder. Response is great, many of viewers of my channel are providing feedback after trying. Feedback is really positive, same is the case with the feedbacks received on Amazon.
Short term plan (next 2-3 months) is to launch these masala blends on most of the e-commerce(including quick commerce) platforms and also in more modern commerce chains. We also have plan to launch few new blends in coming months. In medium to long term, we want to make our products available in middle east, US and Europe.
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