Many of you will have heard the story of the stonecutter who wanted to split a big rock. He took his hammer and started to hit it. He did not make even a scratch. He hit the rock again and again. Not even a crack appeared. But he continued hammering. People saw him get no results and laughed at him. But the stonecutter kept hammering. He knew that though he could not see any immediate effects of his actions, he was making progress. He continued his hammering. After more than 700 strikes, the rock split in half. The moral of the story is that constant pressure applied to the rock finally broke it.
Like the stonecutter, Kabita Singh remained patient. Starting with her first video, she uploaded one recipe every day. But she hardly got any traction. Only a few views came from her friends and family members. After two months, someone commented on one of her videos and asked her to share the recipe for chicken kathi roll. Kabita learnt the recipe, simplified it and prepared the dish for the first time in her life. She asked Manish to try it. He loved the taste. Happily, Kabita uploaded the video and messaged the person who had asked for the recipe. She received no response.
She kept posting her recipe videos, and six months later, she received $1 in her account. She discovered that Google Adsense pays YouTubers once they achieve a certain threshold in terms of videos and views. To celebrate her first earnings from her passion, she organised a pizza party at home. Kabita remembers, “This was my first earning from YouTube, so the feeling was very different. For an income of $1, I spent Rs 2,200 on a pizza party.”
But the journey was not easy. Kabita’s initial eighty-nine videos did not get much of a response. But the break-out moment had arrived. The next day was to be the beginning of her turnaround.
Traditionally, gulab jamun is made using khoya, a milk extract used to make sweets. However, instead of khoya, Kabita used bread. On 3 December 2016, she uploaded her ninetieth video, the recipe for bread gulab jamun. The video went viral. Within a month, it was receiving nearly 100,000 views daily. Due to the popularity of this video, other videos on the channel also started gaining traction. On 19 February 2017, Kabita’s Kitchen crossed the 1-million-subscriber mark. In the next eight months, the channel crossed 2 million subscribers. Kabita was delighted to see the affection and responses she was getting from her audience.
Until then, Kabita had posted videos as and when she had the time. But she soon realised she would have to create a timetable so that viewers knew when to expect her videos. This would increase audience interaction. For the next three years, Kabita posted a video every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Interestingly, the videos posted according to the timetable got higher views than those posted randomly. By January 2020, Kabita’s Kitchen had around 6 million subscribers.
Then, in March 2020, the national COVID-19 lockdown started. As many bachelors and working women were at home, Kabita started getting many requests for beginner-level recipes. She posted recipes showing how to cook roti, sabzi, dal, rice, chole chawal, etc. Along with these recipes, she also posted more accessible versions of snacks and sweets. By October 2020, the channel had crossed the milestone of 9 million subscribers.
Kabita says, “Many people start YouTube channels, but they stop posting videos if they don’t get the expected response in the initial fifteen to twenty videos. The breakout moment takes some time to come, but it definitely comes if one is patient and consistent.”
In January 1996, Bill Gates wrote an essay titled “Content is King”, published on the Microsoft website. In this essay, he said that one of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they create. He also mentioned that the internet allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. But he also expected to see intense competition and failure, as well as success, in all categories of popular content.
Food content is undoubtedly a highly competitive category. Everyone has an opinion on food! Tarla Dalal was once the only Indian celebrity in the world of cooking. She wrote over a hundred cookbooks. Suddenly, many other cookbook writers began to emerge. Then came Sanjeev Kapoor, who transformed the profession of a chef into something respectable and even glamorous. Suddenly, many TV channels started creating cookery shows of their own. Then came the YouTube era, and many chefs tried creating food channels, but few achieved substantial user growth and engagement.
You must be thinking, so how did Kabita become a household name?
Kabita says, “When people think of starting a YouTube channel, they think about a fancy camera, lighting, an interesting set-up, video promotion and other packaging factors. These things are important, but the most important thing is the content. Users watch your video because of the content, and it has to be relevant and different. If you are confident about your content, everything else will fall into place. If your content is well-received and appreciated, then the ride will be smooth.”
To make her content relevant and different from others, Kabita focussed on a classic branding strategy – identify a niche and become an expert in it. Kabita had seen thousands of food videos and found that although they were well-packaged, attention to detail was missing. In most of the dishes, the chefs use a lot of ingredients. Also, cooking timing and temperatures varied for different dishes. If not adequately cooked, food can taste awful. In TV and digital shows, chefs usually say, “Heat the food for some time”, or “use a pinch of spice”, or “use 1/2 a cup of oil and 3/4 cup of yoghurt”, and so on. Many viewers do not understand what “some time” or “a pinch” means, or which cup size is relevant to the context. If they add extra spices or cook for a shorter time, or use the wrong spoon or cup to measure, the taste will not be as expected.
Kabita decided to differentiate her content by covering even the most minor details of cooking. She positioned Kabita’s Kitchen as a channel for beginners and bachelors. She decided to feature easy, instant recipes that “anyone can cook”, with ingredients readily available at home or at a nearby grocery store. While preparing the recipes, she noted every detail from the utensils required to ingredients, quantities, methodology and even the intensity of the flame. She referred to these notes while preparing her video and doing the voice-over.
While attention to detail is good, it can also make videos boring. Kabita likes the speaking style of Chef Sanjeev Kapoor and Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi. Following them and utilising her past teaching experience, Kabita has developed her own explanation style in Hindi, as her audience can relate to it easily. Also, she keeps the cooking set-up homely and straightforward so people find it relatable. The relatability of the environment adds to the comfort level of her viewers. Because of the simplicity of her content, Kabita has received many exciting comments from her audience, such as, “You made a girl who could not make tea into someone looked up to in the family circle for good food.”
Excerpted with permission from Booming Digital Stars: 11 Inspiring Adventures from India’s Creator Economy, Harsh Pamnani and Manish Pandey, Westland.
