VIRAL AND UNPREDICTABLE How Ankur Warikoo amassed millions of followers, how he keeps them engaged, and how you can too!

If you were to come up with an alternative term for the word ‘influencer’, what would it be? Changemaker. Because what you want to do with your content— hopefully—is change the way people consume their own life. Through your experiences, they may have an alternate perspective.

What is the future of ‘going viral’? I thasalw ays been the same, which is, don’t plan to go viral. There is nothing you can do to predict virality. It happens by being disciplined. Then one of those content pieces will catch the attention of a lot of people. But if you work towards it, most likely you’re going to be disappointed as there is no predictable science to it.

What do you do for mental health? Medita tee very day. That’s been part of my life for five-plus years now.

The most challenging part of creating content in your 40s? Answering the question, ‘What the hell are you doing creating content in your 40s?!’ Why do you think someone needs a grey-haired individual telling them how they should be living life? I have stopped answering this question; I just let the quality of my work take over.

A faux pas that you now laugh at? Once, an unedited part of a video made it to the post. And lo and behold, people loved it. They were like, ‘Hey! This is very authentic. You didn’t feel the need to edit this part when most people would just clean it away.’ So, now when I’m shooting andi make a pronunciation mistake or something, I just let it be. Because I want to be seen as someone who is authentic, someone who doesn’t pretend to be perfect.

—KARISHMA KUENZANG