The Crazy Excursion of Maker Prajakta Koli

The YouTube sensation has not just forayed into movies and social and natural support yet additionally turned into a business person by selling her product at the web-based store Merchandise Carport.

"Sorry, I had been holding it in for quite a while," chuckled Prajakta Koli on stage after a tiny burp escaped her mouth and momentarily disrupted her narration of how she became a YouTube sensation after launching her channel 'MostlySane' about 8 years ago. The moment perfectly encapsulated what has endeared Koli to Indian audiences over the years: spontaneous and relatable humor.

When her childhood dream of becoming a radio jockey (RJ) came crashing down after her year-long stint in the industry ended in dismissal, Koli turned to an emerging platform to give her career a new direction: "At 21 years old, I decided to pursue YouTube, which was very new at the time. 

As my channel and audience keep changing, I feel that I'm still finding my feet with content creation." With 6.89 million subscribers on YouTube and 7.7 million followers on Instagram, which feature her interviews with the likes of Michelle Obama, Bill Gates, Jennifer Aniston, and Adam Sandler, as well as top Bollywood celebrities, Koli's social media stature and following have grown massively.

Since childhood, her parents welcomed every career idea with equal enthusiasm, never casting doubt about its feasibility, she said, adding, "That gave me the confidence to one day just shift gears from RJ to something new like YouTube." "It's a great time for content today because the lines are quite blurred. You can watch a film on YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime or in the theatres," stated Koli.

In 2019, she set foot on a film set for the first time while shooting Mismatched, a Netflix coming-of-age romantic drama web series. Unlike YouTube, this was a whole new domain: while playing the first-ever character not written by her proved challenging initially, not being responsible for every other aspect of filming besides acting, such as scriptwriting, managing lighting, camera direction, video editing, etc., was a pleasant discovery.

"The experience was so much fun because all I had to do came to set and say my lines and not worry about anything else. During this time, her rise in the spaces of content and acting was paralleled by a personal journey of cultivating social and environmental consciousness that also unfolded on a public stage: "Around 2016, I started speaking about social issues that were close to my heart such as body shaming and mental health, which then snowballed into girls' education and gender equality.

YouTube allowed me to speak to a variety of people on these subjects; gradually I realized that even though I did not have the experience of working in the climate protection space, I could use my platform to amplify voices that had already been doing a lot of good work." As a result of being part of campaigns and initiatives such as #iPledgeToBeMe, YouTube's 'Creators For Change' and Girl's Education, 'No Offence', Instagram's Safer Internet Week, and One. org's Education, in January 2022, Koli became India's first UN Development Programme (UNDP) Youth Climate Champion.

On turning an entrepreneur, Koli concedes, "I don't feel I have a lot of business acumen when it comes to the technical side of things but I have a team that's very good at it. As she reflects on her insane journey of amassing the approval and admiration of millions of Indians, she is struck by two distinctly 'wow' moments: "In 2018, I did a meet and greet, for which 8,000 people showed up and I thought that that was just unreal." A year later, she met former US first lady Michelle Obama as part of YouTube's global program Creators for Change for a discussion on girl child education.

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