Digital creators Abhiraj Rajadhyaksha, 29, and his wife and co-creator Niyati Mavinkurve, 32, often get asked: “Oh, you guys live in Mumbai, but still don’t own a car?” The husband-wife team, who create online content focusing majorly on climate change under the handle @AbhiAndNiyu, remain imperturbable. “We work in the environment arena and walk the talk. So we prefer to use public transport. After all, we are the original gangsters who traversed India for 200 days in trains between 2019 and 2020 for our YouTube video series ‘100 reasons to love India’,” quips Abhi.
Today they are among India’s most successful content creators with 3.52 million subscribers on their YouTube channel, which they started in April 2018. This January 26, the couple, with 2.7 million followers on Instagram, celebrated a milestone—they planted the 25,000th mango sapling as part of their pet project, Aam Ki Gutli, in collaboration with Mumbai Mission Green, a local NGO that collects mango kernels and plants trees. The project started in 2021. “The ongoing project has managed to collect 40,000 kernels. The work is in progress at the mango farms in Murbad near Mumbai,” he says.
Abhi and Niyu also made news in November last year, as they were the only creators invited from Asia to attend the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Egypt. In fact, a video they made about the racism they experienced at COP27
has garnered a whopping 3.6 million views.
Their first big success was in May 2021 when they requested people nationwide through their video to courier their used masks and PPE kits to Surat-based Binish Desai, who used the waste to make bricks through his startup, Eco-Eclectic Tech Group. In three months, Desai received three tonne masks and PPE kits.
A shared passion for storytelling and disseminating positive news to people brought the college sweethearts together 12 years ago. “We wanted this passion to translate into a YouTube channel,” says the couple, who got married in 2018 and quit their jobs in 2020—Niyu was a chartered accountant and Abhi was an ad filmmaker.
Besides their climate-conscious content, they are also known for their entertaining explainer videos—‘Why Elon Musk is going to space’, ‘Top five ideas to get rich’, and more. On November 7, they released a YouTube video on National Cancer Awareness Day, in which they talked about how the solution to blood cancer is only a click away. The video clocked one million views and 25,000 people signed up to be stem cell donors as a result.
In a country where sensational videos go viral, what chance do climate change videos stand? “The topic can be dry and does not give an instant dopamine hit, but we also have a passionate audience who take the slow and steady route in the adoption of the green policies we talk about,” Abhi says.
While on policies, how do Abhi and Niyu practice a sustainable life? “Besides taking public transport wherever we go, we carry our own reusable cutlery kit. We make our own compost generated through wet waste, peels and leftover food. We reuse the water disposed of by the RO to mop the floor (using the homemade bio-enzyme). This water is then used to flush the toilet,” Niyu says.
Fun fact: Their raddiwala is on their speed dial as he needs to visit them every month to pick up the Swiggy/Zomato food containers. “Instead of throwing the plastic containers, we wash and send them to the local garbage buyer,” they say.
The couple is also part of One For Blue, a made-in-Maharashtra T-shirt brand where each product is made from recycled cotton and thread made of discarded PET bottles. Only a few seem to be able to make the phrase ‘Keep Calm and Go Green’, their hashtags and their careers. Abhi and Niyu do that, and more.