The Journey | Prajakta Koli – Influencing young minds through YouTube

India’s Premiere English business news channel BTVI has launched a new series titled ‘The Journey’, presented by Hyundai, featuring famous personalities from various sectors who will share their success stories and future plans. The show will mainly concentrate on how they built their careers and stayed ahead of competition in today’s fast changing environment. 

The trendsetters, the famous personalities, the voices and faces that everyone looks up to. But it all didn’t begin that way, and this journey – starting from scratch to reach the pinnacles of success – is nothing short of inspirational. 

‘Hyundai Presents The Journey’ airs on Business Television India (BTVI) every Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 1.30 pm. 

Episode 3 – The Journey with Prajakta Koli 

Prajakta Koli was born on June 23, 1993 in Mumbai. Becoming a radio jockey had been her long time dream, and her dream was fulfilled when she got to intern with a radio station right after school. However, this dream didn;t have the happy ending she was hoping for and she was left disappointed. But not one to give up easily, Koli found an alternate dream in the digital space and soon turned into a full time YouTuber. Her first video came out in February 2015 and since that day she has loved the platform more and more with each passing day. Koli has made 313 videos since her first video – ‘5 types of singles on Valentine’s Day’ – and she has been steadily gaining viewers on her channel, MostlySane. One of her most memorable moments was when she represented YouTube as a panel member at the Hyderabad Comic Con.

To Watch Full Episode click here.

How did you decide to become a full time YouTuber?
I was that geek in school who knew exactly what she wanted. In 6^th grade itself I knew that I want to be a radio jockey and that’s how it started. Born and brought up in Mumbai, I spent all my school life preparing for it. Radio jockey wasn’t really a popular thing back then, but I used to enjoy listening to the radio a lot. Growing up, my one talent was speaking. If someone asked me what I do, I’d said I speak and so I thought being a radio jockey seemed fit. 

I remember my mother had a cell phone which had a voice recorder in which I used to record my voice samples over and over again. Then I’d listen to them and make everyone else listen to them too. 

How supportive was your family?
My family has always been super supportive. Before I settled on being a radio jockey, I remember going to my father and telling him that I wanted to be a fashion designer and he said ‘okay’. I then wanted to be a doctor because that time my granny was suffering from arthritis and I wanted to treat her by becoming a doctor. I had all these different ideas about the things I wanted to do. Finally, it was to be a radio jockey and my parents agreed to it. 

How did things change for you then?
Everything went as planned. It was a Saturday that my exams got over and by Wednesday I was already interning at a radio station. However, it was such a downer from there onwards. While growing up I had all these ideas about how radio actually is, but when I started working as an intern, I realised that things were very different from what I had imagined. It is more scripted and directed. I thought you could simply speak what came to your mind, but unfortunately it does not work that way, it’s a company and so it has its own rules. 

Being a radio jockey is super tough. Imagine sitting inside a room and not speaking to anyone. You don’t want anyone to tune out and so you have to be very creative. I figured that it was just not for me. I believe I am visually a more appealing person. Then this amazing thing happened while I was interning. This gorgeous man, Hrithik Roshan, walked into the studio. I have been a huge fan of Hrithik and so I did my classic “Hey, can I get a picture with you?” and shot a very stupid Instagram video with him. Sudeep from One Digital Entertainment saw the video and told me, ‘You have a very fun personality. Have you thought of YouTube? But I brushed it aside. You don’t come up to a broke intern and say hey, there’s another way of not earning money. I kept on ignoring till one day he gave me his card and asked me to call him. 

I was anyways failing, so I thought of giving this a chance. I also started to blog back then – I still blog, but earlier it was different. Then I thought of trying my hand at comedy. I did my first video, which was totally ripped off the internet. I didn’t not know how to make content then and just took content from everywhere else, trying to claim it as my own. One thing with YouTube is that you get immediate feedback.

What was it like, doing your first video? What was it about?
My first video was called ‘Types of singles on Valentine’s Day’. It went up on February 12, 2015, and with Valentine’s Day round the corner, it was the most clickable content. What helped me decide to go for YouTube, was that here I get to make the decisions. I am the content partner and so I get to decide what content goes up. I can take calls on what I am comfortable doing and what I am not. Besides, I get to see people’s reactions to the content that has been put out. 

What is your next goal? Where do you see yourself grow from here? How do you tackle the new competition that is always coming up in an open social media space?
What I have learnt is that on YouTube, any channel can survive if it has its own individual take, because there is so much content in a generalised way. Also, the audience on YouTube is not dedicated to one channel and watches a number of channels at the same time. Although our content overlaps somewhere, we are all going to get viewership if we have our individual take towards it. 

When I started doing content, I got a lot of comparisons which were right because back then all the references I had to YouTube was from other YouTubers. So, my instant reaction to making content was to pick a little bit of style from some YouTubers and delivery from others. Going forward, I tried making videos, going through this rigorous trial and error with my content. I kept on putting out new content and taking feedback as to what is working with my audience and what is not. I soon realised that the audience likes it when I am real. There is a reason I absolutely hate makeup, but I used to wear a lot of it because I was super insecure with everything when I was on camera. When I put up a video in my pyjamas without any makeup, everyone loved it. 

What is the content that you have always stuck to? Humour is something which is always there, but where do you get the ideas for the subject and the theme?
I like calling my content ‘observational humour’. I am not a stand-up comedian who can crack a joke on the go. Observational humour is what we see in everyday life and is very relatable to all of us, but overacted or exaggerated, which makes it funny. 

What is your own favourite personal video that you think you have done the best so far?
‘Shameless’ is one of them. It’s a song I wrote against body shaming; very social, but very fun. Another video which I really like is ‘Types of drunk girls’ for two reasons, one that I look really hot in it and secondly, because I really liked the acting and the scripting that I have done in it. 

So, you do your own scripting, writing and ideation?
I shoot, edit, and write my own videos, but I get a lot of help from the network I am with for the ideation. 

To Watch Full Episode click here.

How did you come up with a name like ‘MostlySane’ for your channel?
When we were thinking about what to name the channel, I didn’t want the channel to be named Prajakta Koli for some reason. I was thinking about a smart name and ‘MostlySane’ was the first name that came to my mind and all of us hated it! I am making sense, but also getting away with doing something stupid, saying I am mostly sane. Though we didn’t like the name, the channel was supposed to give live the very next day and we couldn’t think of anything else, so we moved ahead with it. 

Were there any specific ways you think you could augment your reach?
Content is the only thing that works on YouTube. There’s a reason why the audience who loyally watch YouTube is very parallel and very different from TV and movies, because they are not there to see how well produced the video is or how many special effects and animations it has or how well edited it is; they don’t care about all this as long as the content is something that interests them. They have made a decision of taking time out of their life and going to your channel and have made the choice of watching your videos. The only thing that is ever going to get them back to your channel is your content. 

Another thing that I try to follow as much as I can is consistency – if you tell your viewers that you are going to upload a video every Thursday, you have to make sure it is there every Thursday. Losing the audience is my biggest fear and so I try very hard not to miss a video upload. Content and consistency is one thing that will never go wrong. 

Who is your idol in this space?
I have always said this, and even while growing up, there was never one person. I love meeting and interacting with new people. Every time I meet new people, I try to learn so much from them. I have learnt a lot about attention to detail from another creator, Ranveer from Beer Biceps. From Sudeep, I learnt to take things lightly and at the same time handle things well. There’s not one person whom I look up to, but a lot of people and I am very grateful to each one of them. 

Where do you get your ideas from?
The routine is to make notes every day. I have a notebook in my bag where I write everything down, so while I am scripting I refer to it. I see what’s working, go to Twitter and see what’s trending and pick up topics, see what’s happening everywhere else on social media. Since it is observational, it’s very personal. I have never made a video on my channel which is pretentious, which is something that I don’t know about, that’s why I don’t make videos about engineering because I am not an engineer, though a lot of people have been asking me to. I am trying to meet more engineers so I that can make a video on that. I think because it is way personal, it is easier to write. 

What is your idea of a perfect day?
You ask any YouTuber, they don’t have a day off, but then it’s something we chose and we cannot complain about it. That’s the beauty of my job, no two days are alike. There are days when I wake up and I am in my pyjamas all day, eating popcorn out of my hoodie, sitting, working, watching movies, and eating all the food I want. All the travel I do is from my bed to my desk. Then there are days when I am out of the house very early; I am in Delhi in the morning and Jaipur in the evening and it’s crazy. I enjoy both kinds of days. 

Why do you have to travel?
A lot of events happen and a lot of places are opening up to accepting content that’s digital. I love doing college events as I get to meet a lot of my viewers and that’s the most of my target audience. There are a lot of events that I attend, speaking at colleges, performing at colleges. I talk a lot about body shaming and stuff like that. 

Tell us more about the concept of body shaming. How did you arrive at it?
On World Mental Health Day last year, I did a very simple video on my channel. A lot of people were talking about depression and anxiety, but I didn’t want to talk about that. What I wanted to talk about was what is causing depression and anxiety among young people. Body shaming is something that has always been at the back of my mind. I grew up as a very insecure kid. Though I was never body shamed by any of my family or friends, I was very insecure so I shamed myself. All the time I hated my body, hated the colour of my skin and everything that I didn’t like about myself. Later I realised that I am pretty sure that a lot of people go through it. 

I don’t know how, but after the channel picked up, I started getting mails from young girls and boys talking freely about how they are going through depression or how a girl left them because they are short. So, I decided to use the platform to speak about it and made a video inviting people to share with me if they were facing body shaming issues. We were expecting around 100-150 mails, but by the following week I got around 8,000 mails from young kids and also older people. It was not possible for me to respond to all of them, but I was deeply impacted by what they had written. I had 9-year olds writing to me, saying that they were suicidal because they were fat or had pimples. 

Though I replied to a few of the mails and shared my own personal experiences with them, I soon realised that it was not enough. I wanted to take this forward but wasn’t sure how. My audience understands fun and goofy, so I could not suddenly go in a serious mode. Hence, I came up with a fun way to do this by writing this fun rap song called ‘Shameless’. I gathered if they sang and danced to it, maybe they will get it. 

Where do you see yourself grow from here?
I grew up making plans for me. Every step was planned from my 10^th, 12^th, Degree College and being a radio jockey. Everything went as planned, but there was no element of surprise. There was nothing unbelievable happening, which later started happening with YouTube. So, I put all my plans in the backburner. I don’t know how many avenues are going to open up for me, but personally, I want to act more, I want to get into a web series. However, I want to stay in the digital space and don’t want to go away from YouTube. 

How do you keep your followers across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram excited and give them information or fun? How do you keep track of it all?
I feel that it’s a string that you have to maintain, because you can’t be only on YouTube, it’s not going to take you anywhere. So I use Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and even my blog to get traffic to my YouTube channel, which is the mother ship. 

How do you parents see your profession?
I have the best family and I have always got all the support I needed. When I was not sure about whether I should go for radio or YouTube, I discussed about it with my parents. I told them that I wanted to quit my radio job, where I was not getting anywhere, and get into something about which I had absolutely no idea. I asked them if they would give me the permission to do something for myself for a year. If it worked out, it would be awesome and if it didn’t, I would go for further studies. They said, ‘take two years’. Luckily for me, it worked out.

To Watch Full Episode click here.