India@70: The mom who is earning from Instagram

Back in 2007, one wasn’t accustomed to Indians being routinely told (by fellow Indians) to go to Pakistan at the slightest difference of opinion. The society was still agreeing to disagree. Clouds were what brought rain, not where you sent your files to hibernate. Commerce hadn’t gained an ‘e’, retail hadn’t lost its ‘r’ (Flipkart was launched in September 2007, Amazon arrived in 2012). Twitter was a toddler (the company was a year old, and Katy Perry hadn’t even joined!). Music meant effort, it was burned, rather than streamed. And Tinder was what you needed to light a fire (which you still do, but in a very different way).

Seems much more than 10 years ago, doesn’t it?

We bring you the stories born in the last decade, that didn't exist during India@60. This is the story of an individual who may not have been what they are today, if not for the changes that India has seen over the decade between 2007 and 2017.

The mom who is earning from Instagram

Weekends are hard work,” says

Anupriya Kapur

. Work schedules don’t quite follow the conventional order when the social media is your workplace. Anupriya is a blogger and Instagrammer, who gives her followers tips on fitness and wellbeing, mostly through videos (one of which shows her doing squats with her 9-year-old son Kabir on her back) and posts on her blog, ‘Mom on the Run’. Instagram is where she goes to work — sometimes it’s professional content, and sometimes shoots for her followers. “I’m also inspiring women to wear the sari. And I get tagged by so many women who say, ‘thank you for the inspiration’,” she says. What Anupriya, and hundreds of women like her, are able to do today is an example of how widely social media has influenced the lives of people (only 10 years ago, most Indians only knew Orkut scraps as social media, and were thrilled to bits about it). Over the years, with her follower base growing and her wellbeing tips, like those that tell women to not feel fettered by the stereotype that “mothers should look a certain way” — becoming popular, social media has given Anupriya, who is a single mother, the wherewithal to provide for herself and her son. “I can never go back to a corporate job again,” she says.