This internet-Goddess – who, interestingly enough, started out as a backup-dancer and even appeared in Sukhbir’s iconic Taare Gin Gin music video – started blogging in 2007 when no one had even heard of the term. How she took on a notoriously nepotistic space – Bollywood – as a complete outsider, and the way she practically invented the industry of “social media influencers” – is now the stuff of worldwide (web) legends!
#MaliniAgarwal #FirstIndian #Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
#MaliniAgarwal #FirstIndian #Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 I'm a diplo-brat.
00:15 My father was in the Foreign Service.
00:17 That's why I have a funny accent.
00:18 I was born in Allahabad.
00:19 When I was six months old, we relocated.
00:21 We lived in Somalia, then Greece, Lebanon, Germany,
00:25 Ivory Coast, Bulgaria.
00:26 We moved every three years.
00:27 And then when my father retired, we were in Delhi.
00:30 And I was there for a good six years.
00:31 And I was a backup dancer for Sukhbir.
00:34 And my best friend at the time had
00:35 decided to move to Bombay to pursue advertising.
00:38 So I came to visit her on a really random weekend.
00:41 And I remember I landed.
00:43 It was a monsoon.
00:44 It was raining.
00:45 My window was down.
00:46 I was in one of those black and yellow cabs.
00:49 And I'm very filmy that way.
00:51 It kind of felt like, you know, every time there's
00:53 an actress who's driving away or into her new life,
00:56 I just needed a soundtrack.
00:57 That was all that was missing.
00:59 And I realized right then that I have to move here.
01:02 It was amazing.
01:03 So initially, it wasn't easy.
01:05 I literally landed in Bombay out of a movie with two suitcases.
01:08 And I had saved about 40,000 rupees
01:10 from my dancing, which is, you know,
01:11 not a lot of money in Bombay.
01:12 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:15 Because I lived in a house--
01:24 I documented this in my book-- with six girls
01:26 and a pigeon who would fly somehow into this room at night.
01:29 And it would always fly around the room.
01:31 And I always thought it's going to hit the ceiling fan.
01:33 And there would be blood everywhere.
01:34 So I would sleep with the sheets over my head.
01:36 And I just, like, thought I need to do something with my life.
01:39 I used to write a gossip column in the midday called
01:41 "Malini's Mumbai."
01:42 I remember saying to my friends, you know,
01:43 I wish I had more space to write my column,
01:46 because they always chop it up.
01:47 And it only ends up being who came to which party with who
01:49 and who left with who.
01:50 So this friend of mine, Karan Wadera,
01:52 said, why don't you start a blog?
01:53 And I literally said, what's a blog?
01:56 He said, well, it's like this online diary.
01:57 And you write it.
01:58 And I said, who reads it?
01:59 He goes, don't worry about that.
02:01 And the next day, he made me a WordPress account.
02:03 And he sent it to me.
02:04 And I still remember, it was May 5, 2008.
02:06 I wrote my first blog.
02:08 And I would always rush home, finish my day of work,
02:10 go home, blog, go to the rage station, do my show,
02:13 come home and blog.
02:13 And I'd stay up till, like, 4 or 5 in the morning.
02:15 And I loved it so much.
02:16 And I remember my now husband--
02:18 he was my boyfriend at the time--
02:19 was at Harvard Business School.
02:21 And he was coming back after two years.
02:23 And he came back and started working in finance.
02:25 And I told him, I just want to quit.
02:27 I want to do the blog full time.
02:28 People abroad, Perez Hilton, all of them are doing it.
02:31 And he kept saying, wait, give it a little more time.
02:33 Because I had such a great situation.
02:35 I had four different jobs.
02:36 I was making a lot of money.
02:38 And this was not going to make any money at all.
02:40 So then I was like, I really want to do it.
02:42 So he said, OK, I'm working in finance.
02:44 I'll support us for the year.
02:45 Give it a shot.
02:46 Let's see what happens.
02:47 And I remember I was so excited.
02:49 It was like sometime in February.
02:50 I was so excited to have quit.
02:52 I went home and opened my laptop.
02:54 And I was like, OK, this is it.
02:55 And it was so great, because there was so much interest
02:58 that poured in right away.
02:59 But pretty much for that year, before we raised any money,
03:01 it was me and Mike on my sofa at home.
03:04 And I always used to joke with him.
03:06 I'm like, one day, I'm going to have a pink sofa in my office.
03:09 And six years later, that sofa arrived.
03:11 And it was really funny, because the door to my office
03:13 is really narrow.
03:14 So when the sofa came up, it couldn't fit through the door.
03:17 So we had to saw the legs off, and then get it up,
03:20 and then saw the legs back on.
03:21 But I'm like, that sofa has to come into this office.
03:24 But it was a long road.
03:26 Everyone says it happened overnight.
03:27 It really didn't.
03:28 I started in 2008.
03:29 It's been a decade.
03:30 And I remember going to parties and not knowing anyone,
03:32 not knowing what to wear.
03:33 And I would kind of awkwardly stand around.
03:35 But I think the thing that worked to my advantage
03:37 is that I didn't look like the rest of the press, who
03:40 were like big cameras pushing each other.
03:42 And I was kind of meek.
03:44 And I never really asked anything too personal.
03:47 I would always ask something that I really genuinely
03:49 wanted to know, like how did it feel doing such and such thing
03:54 in this film.
03:55 And what I liked was that that resonated with them.
03:58 And honestly, 80% of the things I know,
03:59 I could never tell anyone or never write.
04:01 And I think keeping that secret for long enough
04:04 gave them that confidence.
04:05 The turning point was sitting there
04:07 and writing all this stuff, I started
04:09 to realize that there's no one else here doing it.
04:12 And even people internationally were getting in touch with me.
04:14 I remember One Drop Foundation got in touch and said,
04:17 like, hey, we're looking for bloggers around the world.
04:19 We'll send you a flip video camera
04:21 if you do a post for us.
04:22 And for me at that time, I'm like,
04:24 wow, somebody's going to send me a video camera
04:26 for writing a blog?
04:27 It was mind-blowing to think about it.
04:28 And I didn't realize that from 2008,
04:30 we have been an influencer brand, which
04:32 is all the raves today.
04:35 And then I think what happened is Mike and Nashaad were sitting
04:37 with me because someone actually came to me
04:39 and they offered me a sum of money
04:41 for a percentage of my business.
04:43 I didn't even think of it as a company then.
04:45 I barely had trademarked the name and a logo.
04:47 And they said, look, don't do it.
04:49 Don't give it up yet.
04:51 Let's do this together.
04:52 I said, are you guys sure?
04:53 Are you in it for the long run?
04:54 And they said yes.
04:55 And that's when it kind of been no looking back.
04:58 We decided to move into an office.
04:59 We set up and paid the rent from the little money
05:02 that we would make in.
05:03 And then we raised-- in 2012, we raised a little seed money
05:06 through Rajan Anand, the head of Google,
05:08 and a bunch of other people to get us started.
05:12 I think one of the things that I've realized
05:14 is that as a brand that's been around for so long,
05:17 we also have a responsibility now
05:19 to speak for the millennial audience.
05:21 And for instance, with things that are happening
05:23 like the Me Too movement, I think that voices like ours
05:26 are so important.
05:27 And I like to call my audience Priyanka.
05:29 Priyanka started following me in 2008.
05:32 And I always thought that I was just Priyanka's source
05:34 for Bollywood gossip, her Bollywood BFF.
05:37 But I've realized that she's grown up with me
05:39 for the last 10 years.
05:40 And now she looks to me for everything-- work advice,
05:43 relationship advice, mental health, social causes,
05:45 all these other things.
05:47 And it's kind of like having a big sister on the internet.
05:50 And that's really what we want to be.
05:52 And I think that's really the future for us.
05:55 (upbeat music)
05:57 (upbeat music)