From Prajakta Koli to Rickshawali - meet the women who are making money from YouTube

From fashion to music and entertainment- Indian women on YouTube aren’t just chasing their passion or making good use of their time. They are busy with full-time careers as YouTubers and making as much money or more than anyone working in a corporate or a startup.

Thursday August 29, 2019 , 5 min Read

Internet and technology have opened up avenues for women helping them overcome challenges of working away from home, commuting and safety issues like never before. With basic video editing skills and some good ideas, many women have gone on to build a career on YouTube overcoming all age, language, and demographical differences.

As long as your content is engaging, new and relatable, it gets easy to build a viewer base. These women not only earn well to have a comfortable life but are also influencers and popular with brands looking to spend on advertising.

Here is a list of 8 women YouTubers who have created a name for themselves and garnered millions of followers on YouTube.

Sejal Kumar

With 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube, Sejal Kumar is a big hit because of her fashion and lifestyle videos. Almost 87 percent of her audience is female and mostly women in the age group of 15-35. A large chunk of her audience is from South India. Her videos include everything from trendy fashion styles to how to drape the same outfit differently to her travel to Korea or move to Mumbai,

She joined YouTube in 2012. The secret behind’s Sejal’s success has been quality, consistency and communication. She ensures that the video quality is good, and posts regularly and keeps up with consistent themes too. Sejal also ensures that she communicates with her viewers and regularly keeps updating them with developments on her end. This helps her to keep the stream of communication alive.

Prajakta Koli

Prajakta Koli has a huge following on YouTube, with 4.1 million subscribers for her channel MostlySane. Prajakta does not follow a theme but her videos are fun and wide ranging. The list includes content on mental health and body shaming to must watch TV shows to the different stages of life as a college student. She joined YouTube in 2015.

“My US visa reads ‘Occupation: YouTuber’. With the whole digital wave that has been happening in our country, thinking YouTube can’t be a real career is just not sensible,” she told HerStory in an earlier interview.

"It is all about being consistent with your content and being yourself. You can only get to a certain extent if you copy others. Your audience will know when you copy someone or if you use a fake accent. It is absolutely essential for you to be ‘you’ on your videos and slowly people will start to resonate with you, if you regularly connect with them," she adds.

Vidya Iyer

When it comes to music, Vidya Iyer is a big hit on YouTube. Her YouTube channel Vidya’s Vox has 6.1 million followers. Her music like her Indian-American heritage is a mix of genres with Western Pop and Electronic influences. She launched her channel in 2015.

She was born in Chennai and and grew up singing Carnatic Classical music. Vidya also performs live throughout the world with her own band.

Shruti Arjun Anand

Shruti Arjun Anand’s channel which has 4.9 million subscribers is a mix of beauty and entertainment. It also features DIY videos and sketches. The videos are in Hindi and cover everything from kitchen hacks to wedding hairstyles, to affordable makeup and makeup tutorials. She joined the medium in January 2010.

Pooja Luthra

Pooja Luthra joined YouTube in 2012 and her Hindi channel has mostly videos on beauty and health tips and more. Pooja covers a wide range of topics such as beauty tips, skin care tips, fat loss, weight loss diet plans etc. Her channel has 4.2 million subscribers.

Anisha

Anisha is of Indian-German origin and resides in Mumbai. Her YouTube channel Rickshawali has 2.2 million subscribers. She came to Mumbai to try her luck in Bollywood but that didn’t take off as planned. During an auto ride she got the idea to make videos using an auto rickshaw as a prop. She hasn't looked back ever since.

Rickshawali’s focus is on day-to-day activities of women and their issues. She uses her vlogs and sketches to also talk about topics that are considered taboo in India.

Trisha

Indian Girl Channel Trisha is what Trisha’s channel on YouTube is called. It has 2.4 million subscribers. Trisha covers everything from beauty tips, DIY, makeup, beauty benefits, hairstyle hacks etc. She also features product reviews. She joined in February 2016. The videos are in Hindi.

Sonali Bhaduria

Sonali Bhadurai quit Infosys to chase her childhood love - dancing. Her YouTube channel LiveToDance with Sonali has 1.8 million subscribers. Sonali started on YouTube in 2016. She is based out of Pune and posts videos of her choreography. She continued to work for some time as an engineer and also as a trainer till she quit to focus on her dance full time.