In just four minutes, a Kadhai Paneer recipe video takes us from the sizzling frying of raw vegetables to the fragrant browning of fresh cheese and the slow stirring of a deep orange tomato ginger paste — hungry yet? By combining the power of sight, sound and motion, Indian cooks are drawing in global audiences and dishing out some of the top food and cooking content on YouTube around the world.
In terms of watch time, we found that two of the top ten YouTube food channels globally are from India. Within Asia, Indian content creators hold four of the top ten YouTube food channels.
This global and regional appetite for Indian cooking content is also mirrored at home with Indian food lovers increasingly tuning in to YouTube. Whether people are going online to learn how to make samosas or to compare Hyderabadi biryani recipes, we’ve seen a 40% year-on-year growth in Indian viewership for food and cooking content on YouTube. And in the past 12 months, India was the top country in the world searching for “Recipes” on YouTube, followed by UAE, Qatar, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, United States and United Kingdom.
To celebrate the rise of Indian food content on YouTube, we highlighted some of these creators as India’s YouTube Top Chefs, or those producing the most watched cooking channels in India. Here’s a taste of what you can expect:
Tune in to Nisha Madhulika for over 1100 videos showing you how Indian cooking can be made easy. Using her own kitchen as a studio, 54-year-old Nisha, a housewife from Noida, creates YouTube videos that guide you through Indian recipes based on easily available ingredients. Started back in 2011, Nisha’s channel now has more than 145,000 subscribers and 4.5 million views
Next time you feel like a healthy Indian treat, check out Sanjay Thumma’s video tutorial on how to whip up some Fat Free Aloo Gobi Matar for dinner. Sanjay’s VahChef has more than 1200 videos full of recipes and humor, which have already earned the love of over 300,000 subscribers.
If you haven’t already heard of Sanjeev Kapoor, you can watch India’s most celebrated chef master his way around the kitchen on Sanjeev Kapoor Khazana. With recipes ranging across all kinds of cooking skill levels as well as cuisines, Sanjeev’s videos already have over 100 million views.
You can also observe Chef Harpal, a chef with over 25 years of culinary experience, revive classic Indian dishes in number of kitchens across the country on chefharpalsingh. And for those who speak Telugu, homemaker Gayatri makes South Indian recipes like Paani Puri easy to follow along on Gayatri Vantillu.
These Top Chefs are local homemakers and celebrity chefs alike, highlighting how web original content continues to bloom in India. We’re excited that Indian cooks across the board are building global viewerships on our platform and we hope that the success of these creators will inspire many more Indians to use YouTube as their stage for sharing Indian food globally.
