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Archana Doshi has used the web marvellously to create and popularise her brand of food blogging and consulting, making it the empire it is today.
A decade of married life, work-life balance, a few years of living abroad, missed festivities (owing to the dead relative whose face I struggle to recollect), the daily grind, pregnancy, the himalayan endeavor of raising a baby, sickness, celebration, gatherings, guests, vacations. This is my story. Guess what was part of my life throughout, no matter what? Apart from the inevitable husband, of course? Cooking!
From the days of being the Queen of the Kitchen (only), women have come a long way, yet they still hold the exclusive ownership (like it or not) of what a family eats in any household (barring a few exceptions). Family recipes along with the heirloom gadgets had been carefully passed down from one woman to another as word-of-mouth or through yellow-stained papers (mostly torn from the kids ‘rough’ notebook or the backside of a calendar sheet). More sophisticated ‘moms’ had a diary of their own with curated recipes, including those from TV Shows and Magazines that they yearn to try one day.
As nostalgic as these may sound, they are just that, these days – nostalgic. Social Media has drastically changed the way we consume information. Food is no exception. Add some technology (social media, in particular) to cooking and you have the perfect recipe for drooling over hundreds and thousands of recipes and cuisines that you have never even heard of.
Archana Doshi of Archana’s Kitchen has embraced this change wondrously. From the days of starting it as a blog to making it the personal brand that it is today, Archana shares with us how social media has helped her change her passion into a business.
In 2001, when the dot-com bubble burst, Archana lost her job and took up her Masters in IT to hone her skills. Luckily, she soon realised that this was not her calling. As renowned Author Ken Robinson says, we need to challenge what we take for granted about our abilities. And that’s what Archana did. In 2007, she started a blog to talk about Food and Recipes that soon converted into a website with close to 12 millions of viewers per month across various platforms. Google ran a nation-wide Ad featuring Archana. Archana Doshi is a living example of the advertisement’s message, ‘the web is what you make of it’.
Archana says she has always been an early adopter of social media platforms, be it YouTube or Twitter or Instagram. It has helped her reach out to millions of interested audiences. From being a one woman army, today Archana works with close to 500 contributors and a small dedicated team. She has been working with brands like Knorr, Britannia, Tetley, Saffola Fit Foodie, Nutri Foods (Govt of India), Vivatta, Philips Home Appliances, Mahindra Gusto-Food Trail, Fox Life India, KitchenAid India, Zansaar, Ritu Dalmia’s Book Giveaway, Vikas Khanna’s Book Promotion, FoodPanda, Tata Salt Lite and many more. And she has leveraged the power of social media to build this empire.
Our take away from Archana’s story is that Women Entrepreneurs should not shy away from Technology and should use it to leverage their business and to reach out to the right audience. After all, the expert in anything was once a beginner.
Watch this episode for the complete story of How Archana built her Business on Social Media.
Image source: YouTube
Entrepreneurship and entertainment have been the key themes in her work life. In a career spanning over 18 years, she has launched a film magazine, hosted a film-based radio talk show and co-founded read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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