YouTube’s ‘The Big Forkers’ – Feasting On Food And Fortune
BENGALURU, (IANS) – A lot of people like to eat, but Shashank ‘Shanky’ Jayakumar and Sid Mewara, who are famous as The Big Forkers, have traveled the world indulging their love of food.
Sid, a Florida chef-turned-Wharton-trained-investment-banker living in Goa, was in Italy some years ago, getting hard-nosed over a business deal, when he received a call from Shanky, his cousin who’s also an ecopreneur and World Bank consultant, asking for his opinion on where to have the best paella in Spain.
Sid not only had the answer but also got so excited that he flew off to Valencia to join Shanky and partake of the treat. They then joined a group of friends who were traveling in the footsteps of chef, television star, and best-selling author Anthony Bourdain to discover the culinary secrets of Southern Spain.
During the trip, seeing the lengths they were prepared to go to have the best paella, one of their mates, who’s a social media influencer, suggested that Sid and Shanky launch their own YouTube channel so that they could keep traveling for food and talking about it, and perhaps, also make some money out of their work.
They had no media experience but they were confident they could talk non-stop, and Shanky, being a techie based out of Mumbai, knew enough people who could do a decent job producing YouTube videos.
‘The Big Forkers’, a YouTube channel makes an immediate impression for its superior production values, conversational format, and creative use of graphics to convey information that channel hosts tend to meander with.
On their channel, the irreverent and voluble Sid and Shanky travel from the Shetty bars of Mumbai to Singapore, where they find out what real Chili Chicken looks and tastes like, and to the barbecue haunts of ‘brisket country’ Austin, North Texas.
It is not just their passion for food, and the unscripted nature of their channel, but their head for business that also makes Shanky and Sid stand apart. As Sid put it, most people driving Indian YouTube channels can’t monetize their work even if they have a massive reach because vast audiences don’t necessarily translate into significant ‘wallet power’.
What they have successfully shown to their partners, notably alcohol brands, is that they may have a subscriber base that can be measured in tens of thousands, but they are all people with wallet power, with whom they engage through events and the Forkers Dining Club, a celebratory WhatsApp group, where members from across the country share information about food and their meal experiences.
