Heena Khandelwal speaks to Delhi-based Instagrammer Himanshu Sehgal, who has managed to crowd-source funds to travel and document the hidden dishes of all 29 states
A yellow plate has been travelling all over India, including Agra's Taj Mahal, Mumbai's Juhu beach and Meghalaya's Seven Sister Waterfall, to list a few. The man who's been carrying it everywhere is 27-year-old Himanshu Sehgal, an engineer by education.
Tired of technical jobs, Sehgal tried his hand at digital marketing with a start-up in Delhi. Soon he left that too for freelancing and as it turned out, most of his clients were in the food business. This is when, in August 2015, the 'yellow plate' fever hit him. And accidentally so. One day, after lunching on rajma chawal in a yellow plate (the lone one in a stack of steel plates in his kitchen) he clicked a picture and put it up on Instagram. The post received a great response and made his friend crave the dish. That's how he thought of working around food, and the yellow plate took centre-stage.
"I would order in a lot, eat on that plate, click photos and post them. One day, mom got very angry and threatened to discard it. I reacted: 'Don't throw my yellow plate!', and the name emerged," Sehgal recalls.
Stepping Out
Soon the plate began travelling with him, at first on a trip to McLeod Ganj and then almost everywhere. "I didn't have many followers then, but the response was encouraging. One blogger asked to catch up and we ended up organising a 20-people bloggers meet in Delhi," says Sehgal. Till then everyone had assumed a girl was behind the handle! Food reviews gave way to food exploration—he would ask friends and locals like the paan walas or chai walas for suggestions and got inclined towards street food. They were new and interesting like "vodka momos in Lajpat Nagar and kulle wali chaat in Old Delhi," he says. Interesting people he met began featuring on his posts too. A year ago, a shout out from British filmmaker and vlogger Louis Cole got him 4,000 more followers and an award from The Lalit. Meeting chef Vikas Khanna only added to his fan following that's now 19K.
Though none of this yielded revenue, Sehgal managed his and his parents' expenses through freelance projects. "Everything was going great, my Insta account was catching the attention of people in the food industry. Then in 2016, my clients began complaining due to different issues," says Sehgal. It was a tough time and a tough choice to make, but last December, he chose to take a sabbatical and focus on My Yellow Plate.
Pan-India plans
Sehgal then chalked out a bigger plan – a film project titled 'That guy with a yellow plate' for which he wishes to explore food from all 29 Indian states and bring forth stories of people and hidden dishes. Wishberry, a crowd-funding platform, helped him get Rs1.65 lakh of his initial estimate of Rs7 lakh. He's re-budgeted to Rs5 lakh that he plans to raise in the second/final round. The deadline is June 15. If plan A fails? Plan B is to approach brands for sponsorship.
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