Creator Kahani: Shreyaa Kapoor decodes the journey of a finfluencer
Finance content creator and influencer Shreyaa Kapoor has worked as a strategist for some renowned brands in the fin-tech space. Beginning her journey as an influencer in April 2021, Kapoor has become one of the top finance influencers in the country today with 600k+ followers on Instagram and other social media platforms within the time span of just two years.
Kapoor is also a freelance finance consultant. Being a finance major, she believes in simplifying the jargons pertinent to investment, budgeting, insurance, taxation and credit for people around, one Reel at a time.
In this video interaction with Adgully, Shreyaa Kapoor shares her journey to becoming a finance influencer, the initial hiccups, her realisation of the monetisation potential of her content, the scope of financial influencers in the influencer ecosystem, and much more.
What made you decide to be a finance influencer? What were you doing before becoming an influencer?
Becoming a Content Creator was never on the cards. Before this, I did my undergrad in Finance at Delhi University. I started working with big 3 Management Consulting for almost 2 years. After that, I quit that job, became a freelancer, and started helping Fintech companies with their strategy, because I had a background in strategy and finance. Fintech became the right space for me. I became a strategist for some of the biggest Fintech companies in the country, and then slowly and gradually even expanded abroad and also got international clients on board.
This was around 2020 to 2021 when one of the biggest Internet companies in our country actually asked me to become the face of their YouTube Channel, because they were coming up with the English YouTube Channel at that time. I said an immediate ‘No’, because I was really camera conscious. But then, once I said no to them, they immediately hired someone else, obviously because the show must go on.
That’s when I decided to come up with my own content and work towards being comfortable in front of the camera. When I started out, I didn’t use my own name, but used a pseudo name – ‘The Money Sapling’, because I just didn’t want people to recognise me. In fact, I was not even putting out video content. I was just putting out static posts. That’s how it started out. Gradually I gained the confidence to start showing my face on camera and stared using my own name.
How has your journey as an influencer been?
It has been quite a journey! When I started out in April 2021, the pandemic second wave was in full swing. So, I was just looking at it like a distraction from what was happening outside, because I had Covid, my entire family had Covid, and Delhi had literally became the epicenter. While I was also freelancing with clients, this became a creative outlet for me rather than watching the news and consuming all of the negative news at that time. I started creating content on the side during all that free time, but never thought that I’d be monetising it.
Within just month and a half of starting out, I got my first paid partnership – one of the brands that I was working with as a strategist wanted to do an Instagram Live with me as a paid partnership. That was when I first realised that this is something that can be monetised. That’s when it hit me that the audience that I am building is so niche that finance companies are ready to pay a price just to reach that audience. That was my first wake-up call. And ever since then, I’ve had to grow on the platform. I need to focus a lot more on video content, because that’s the only way to grow.
As I mentioned earlier, I was focusing just on static posts. But after that shift, I started focusing a lot more on video content. And I remember that the first few videos did not even feature me! The first video that I put out was actually my dad’s. My dad is a Chartered Accountant, which added an extra layer of finance there. The video was about him going through my crypto portfolio and laughing because in 2021, crypto was also in full swing. And that video got like 7 million views, with an existing audience of about 2,000 people. Suddenly, after that video I had 5,000-6,000 people following me. It became a significant number. And that’s when I recognised the power of video content on the platform. Thus, I decided to shift my strategy from just static posts to also creating video content.
These are edited excerpts. For the complete interaction, watch below:
Share
Facebook
YouTube
Tweet
Twitter
LinkedIn