BENGALURU: There is no way one hasn’t stumbled upon Raghu Vine Store, Anu Karagada, MacMacha, MetroSaga, and Vadiraj Babaladi on their Instagram feed. These creators have garnered thousands of followers just by making digital content on platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube in their mother tongue, Kannada, while making it sound relatable to the younger generation. We already know many of them by their aliases, but here we meet the real people who are rocking it on social media.
Raghu Gowda, popularly known as Raghu Vine Store, is a former Bigg Boss contestant and has over 4,58,000 followers on Instagram. “No one had an idea that content could be made in Kannada on Instagram,” says Gowda, who is one of the pioneers of content in Kannada. The IT professional-turned content creator believes that Kannada content shouldn’t be restricted to movies or literature but could be put out on digital platforms. In the beginning, he was advised to make content in English or Hindi to reach a wider audience, but he dedicated himself to create videos in Kannada, which proved to be a huge success. “I create characters that are you and me.
I have my own multiverse of madness on the internet,” he adds. Macwin Ian D’Souza aka ‘Mac Macha’ is another household name in Karnataka. His far-reaching and diversified content on Bengaluru’s culture has more followers than ever before. “I lived most of my life in Bengaluru and the culture of this city defines who I am,” says D’Souza, whose forte has been creating content that is relatable to Bengaluru residents and Kannada speakers.
“It’s not a conscious decision to create regional content,” he says, adding, “But it naturally flows out of me.” Vadiraj Babaladi, another digital creator from Belgaum, hails from a family of theatre artistes. Influenced by regional culture, he started his journey by making videos on YouTube with his friends. With the pandemic limiting their gathering, he had to branch out for a solo launch. Babaladi’s videos are in the unique northern Karnataka dialect, which has always piqued the interest of residents from the south. “South Kannadigas like our (North Kannada) accent.
The slang may sound rude but it is fun and nice to hear,” says Babaladi. Anu Karagada, a model and content creator, is the prodigy of turning daily life scenarios into minute-long videos. She has garnered over 3,84,000 followers on Instagram with her laugh-at-life humour. Scenes from college, workplace, neighbourhood, childhood — she presents them all with a dash of humour and a whole lot of Kannada. “What Karnataka or Bengaluru needs more is Kannada content creators… at least in comedy,” she says. Just like any other digital content creator, Karagada aspires to become a pan-India artiste. She says, “I hope someday, even Kannada creators will reach greater heights.
And I’m pretty sure soon we’ll do that.” Metrosaga is not a single person, but a team of both inhouse and freelance creators who create Kannada content. “We founded it with an intent to create good-quality content in Kannada which was missing,” says Shri Nag, founder and content head. Going local comes with its own challenges when catering to a pan-India audience. “With Kannada videos, we cannot entertain Telugu, Tamil, Hindi audiences completely. So, we subtitle our videos in English. This is the challenge in creating content which is spoken locally,” adds Nag.
