Gagandeep Sahni, an amateur chef and food vlogger whose delicious content has been rapidly enticing viewers on Instagram, has roughly 40 thousand followers, and it’s growing each day.

He enjoys exploring both Indian and international cuisine and likes experimenting with his recipes. In a conversation with TheBOTStory.com, he spoke about his love for food and cooking.

Speaking about how he began his journey, Gagandeep said, “I belong to a Punjabi family, and in Punjabi families, food is a top priority. My mother loves to cook, and she loves to create and recreate new recipes. This was the atmosphere I grew up in. I used to watch Rocky and Mayur’s show on NDTV (Highway on My Plate), which really inspired me. I started my journey on Instagram around 2018 in my second year of college; at that time, Instagram was a new thing. There was also the temptation that I would get free food if I started reviewing restaurants! I am not a trained chef; whatever I have learnt is mostly through my mother. The recipes are by mom, and are shot by me, it is a joint venture. I work as a research analyst for a startup on weekdays, and on weekends I prepare recipes and review eating places.”

He also highlighted how getting the first 1000 followers on Instagram was a challenging task before reels came into play, Sahni said: “When I started my journey, there was no reels feature on Instagram; it was just posts. So yes, it was indeed a difficult task to get to 1000 followers; I had to network a lot for that. However, things did become easier when videos were introduced, and now with reels, it’s quite unpredictable; some reels really do well and some just don’t go up. It is now about capturing the audience’s attention in the first 5–6 seconds.”

Gagandeep said that reels which feature Indian recipes get more likes and engagement than international recipes because the audience relates to them more. He further added that fusion food has probably reached its saturation point, and people are now back to searching for authentic Indian recipes. He highlighted how his recipe for ‘Sabudana Tikki’ during the Navratri season has the most views.

When asked if he plans to increase his food vlogging content, Gagandeep said:”I actually love both food reviews and recipes, so I plan to continue both simultaneously. In fact, as I had said earlier, I had started off by reviewing restaurants.”

A very crucial aspect of content creation is the timing of posting the content online, ‘what is the best time of the day to post a reel? which day? Weekends better or weekdays?’ All these questions are often talked about by influencers and content creators, Gagandeep agreed that these were indeed very important aspects, and he does keep all this in mind before posting a reel.

“You have to think at what time you audience is active and when it’s not. Yes, it is hit-and-trial, but you do get a fair idea after a point. For me, between 11:15 and 11.30 a.m. and between 6.15 and 6.30 p.m. are the best phases to post. Even for Instagram stories, I have different time slots. Sundays, I feel, are very difficult to crack,” Sahni added.

On being asked whether he would like to collaborate with an agency as a content creator, Gagandeep sounded sceptical and said: “No doubt agencies bring collaborations, but they also take their cut, and sometimes they do try to advise you on the content, which I don’t think I want right now. Hence, I feel going solo is fine as of now; maybe in the future, if I get a good opportunity from an agency, I will see.”