"Content Is Not Just the King, It's the Kingdom" - Akshay Marwadkar and Nikita Jagyasi

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1. Tell us about your background and journey. 

We are two young foodie friends who are about to be engineers from Nagpur. It's been around almost 2 months now that we've started our food page on Instagram named tastebeforewaist (sounds cool right) completely out of interest and absolute love for food. 

We did not start this page because everyone was doing so or it was something cool to do, we did it just because we have a big appetite for good food and wanted to share it with others! 

Food blogging is so saturated these days that getting in as a complete noob and growing it to the top is quite difficult. 

So we started our journey very enthusiastically and slowly some challenges started to emerge like due to lockdown we cannot go anywhere so all the food has to be cooked at home and it's difficult to find new spaces to click pictures, we don't even own a tripod right now and due to lockdown we can't meet to work together. 

But that doesn't mean we are going to use these difficulties as excuses to bail out, we are here for the long run. So fingers crossed for our journey ahead, we're going to make the most out of it. 

2. When did you first decide that you wanted to create content and how did you start? 

I've been a foodie my entire life. On my birthdays, along with the gifts, my mother cooks many of my favorite dishes because she knows food is what makes me the happiest. I'm a person who would roam in and around the kitchen all excited whenever something good is cooking. 

In my college days, a visit to the canteen daily was a must even though I used to carry a tiffin. So when this concept of food blogging came out and creators started rising is when it felt like this is something I should be doing. 

If you'll look into my explore page, all you'll see is food, a little of show friends, Bollywood and some more food. So it was pretty obvious that this is what I should be doing, the only problem was the lack of courage. 

Lockdown came with a lot of spare time for our minds to wander which obviously kept thinking about food so, after so much of deliberation, my friend and I gathered the courage and finally did it! It feels so good to be able to do what you love, though there are challenges but so are those happy moments! 

3. Is vlogging and YouTube content creation a financially sustainable career? 

We are still in the budding phase of our food blogging journey and haven't monetized it yet. But we feel that content creation can definitely be financially sustainable, but the most important thing is evolution. 

Social media is all about trends, so changing and growing creatively with these trends is most vital. The first question we need to ask ourselves is not how can I earn from this but how can I provide value, the rest will follow. 

4. Who is your favorite creator and why? 

To be honest, we were waiting for this question. Our favorite creator is Parth Bajaj. He is from the same college as ours and we've been following him when he had like 1k followers. Now his followers count is over 85k. 

He was the one who introduced us to this concept of food blogging. There were many bloggers then, but we were unaware of them. We first came across Parth Bajaj's work and admired it a lot. 

Earlier his page was named 'nagpuritadka'. His content always made us relate to it and we absolutely loved it and still do. We also like Sarah Hussain (her Instagram handle is named zingyzest) because she's the trendsetter in this field. 

5. How and where do you find inspiration to churn out content? 

There's no shortage of inspiration for any kind of work these days. You open your phone and there's plenty of it. So yeah we try to look around ourselves in both physical and virtual environment for inspiration and try to be creative in our implementation. 

For example, one day we were figuring out what to post so I started roaming in and around the kitchen thinking about some stuff, then suddenly just took out few things that I love like ice cream, waffy, and rose syrup, mixed them up and there you go, a complete masterpiece of a recipe in itself. 

So you have to be patient and aware of everything around you and you'll find your inspiration. 

6. What does your typical day look like? 

Just like in any other field the whole day is spent working, our day too is spent working on the content. Since we've started our page during the lockdown, we don't have any old pictures from restaurants or cafes.

All our content has to be created by cooking at home. Right from deciding what to post, collecting the ingredients, cooking, clicking pictures, recording videos, cleaning, deciding the caption, editing and watermarking, if it's a recipe video, deciding the music for it, studying the insights, engaging with other creators are the things that take up our time. 

There are such times when the dishes don't work out as expected and we've to again work on them. So yeah this is how our day looks like. But we try to divide work and manage time. For example, if one person is cooking and clicking pictures, the other person edits and decides the caption and music. 

7. Which is your favorite book and why? 

My favorite book is "The Compound Effect" by Darren Hardy. Why? Because it changed the way I used to see the world, there was a complete paradigm shift. 

It shows us how small baby steps are done over a period of time leads to a larger compounding effect on our life, though these actions don't seem to make any significant difference at first doing them consistently with patience changes our lives drastically. 

It tells us that no matter where we are and what we do, we take 100% responsibility of everything be it our business or our relationships, that's real maturity. 

Getting out of the inertia is the most difficult part but one's momentum (or Big Mo) sets in, things align pretty easily. So in short the road to success is quite easy, it just takes time and consistent effort. 

8. What piece of advice would you like to give to future and aspiring creators? 

Since we ourselves are quite early in this process we are not positioned to give anybody any advice, we can just share what we've learned and are trying to implement. 

Firstly Content is not just the king, it's the kingdom. So that's our main focus. We do not believe in taking the easier dishonest road so we've decided not to engage in any process that is related to gaining easy followers even though it might take time. 

So consistency and patience construct the path we are following right now which anyone who is looking to be successful in any area should follow too.

- Akshay Marwadkar and Nikita Jagyasi , Blogger

- Interviewed by Shilpy Sharan