Influencers move from reel to real for more eyeballs

Digital content creators such as Viraj Ghelani and Larissa D'sa are among an intrepid bunch of influencers that seeks to venture beyond the comfort zone of mobile screens to take their wares to live audiences.

- Pratishtha Bagai

In a way, the pattern is a familiar one, when online-only e-commerce firms had started setting up offline stores to attract more customers and generate greater brand recall a few years ago.

With competition for eyeballs getting increasingly fierce on social media, digital influencers are testing out physical events to increase their chances of getting noticed and take in valuable feedback. Such events also provide brands a new opportunity to propagate their messages and improve returns on their investment on such influencers.

To be sure, it is but a nascent journey that not many have been brave enough to start, simply because physical events can land one in financial losses.

Take Ghelani, 31, a Mumbai-based creator of comedy and lifestyle content. Ghelani, who has more than 1.3 million followers on Instagram, spent most of the past five years curating digital content. Now, for the past eight months, he has given about 12 performances of his standup comedy show in cities like Ahmedabad, Mumbai, even London.

"Taking my comedy from the screen to the stage is a dream come true," Ghelani said in an emailed reply to Mint's queries. "When you are performing live, there are no retakes, no edits or backup shots. Every room is a different energy and a different performance."