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MEA brings in more groups of influencers and content creators
The initiative, the brainchild of the ministry’s external publicity division, has been backed by foreign secretary Vikram Misri and his predecessor Vinay Kwatra.
The external affairs ministry has expanded its engagement with social media influencers to Europe and North America, months after visits by groups from the neighbourhood and West Asia, to take the India story to a younger global audience.
Two groups of influencers and social media content creators from several European countries and the US are currently in India, and their itinerary includes visits to monuments, tech hubs and film studios in different parts of the country, people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
The nine-member group from the US, comprising mostly content creators with a sizeable following on Instagram and YouTube, arrived in India on September 26 and is travelling to Telangana, Kerala and New Delhi during its nine-day visit.
The group from Europe includes 15 influencers and content creators from France, Germany, Spain and the UK, and will travel to New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka during an eight-day trip that began on October 2.
“We had a good response from engaging two groups from India’s neighbourhood and extended neighbourhood, and decided to look towards Europe and North America for the next two groups,” one of the people cited above said.
“The content created by the first two groups has helped in raising the profile of our missions in the countries of the influencers as well as the profile of India itself. This can be seen in the engagement with the content created by them,” the person added.
While the schedule for both groups includes well-known monuments that are on the itinerary of most foreign visitors, such as the Taj Mahal, Humayun’s Tomb and Qutub Minar, there will also be excursions to regional attractions such as the 11th century Golconda Fort and the Charminar in Hyderabad, and Jew Town and Kodungallur Church, the country’s first church, in Cochin.
The group from the US has also visited Ramoji Film City and Phantom FX, one of India’s leading VFX studios that has worked on a range of Hollywood blockbusters and TV series.
Besides activities such as heritage walks and experiencing a houseboat journey in Alleppy, both groups will be taken to Gujarat Bhawan in New Delhi for an “Indian food experience”, the people said.
“The programmes are carefully curated to showcase the old and the new, as well as the culture of India. This is why they will be taken to places such as the Hyderabad Technical Park and T-Hub in Hyderabad and participate in Dussehra festivities in Mysore,” a second person said.
The group from the US includes Asya Olson, a California-based travel and lifestyle content creator with 430,000 followers on Instagram, Kyle Paul Harris, an actor and influencer with 200,000 followers on Instragram, and Daniella Bragg, a travel content creator with 82,000 followers.
Among the content creators from Europe are Carlos Santa Engracia Gonzalez, a tech and gaming influencer with 630,000 followers on Instagram, and Amit Bansal, an Indian based in Munich who helps people learn German with language tips and has nearly 130,000 followers on Instagram.
The group from the UAE that visited in August produced a range of reels and short videos that focused on topics as diverse as the monuments and culture of old Delhi to the Tibetan heritage of Ladakh. As first reported by HT, the external affairs ministry began engaging with influencers and social media content creators after interacting with journalists from around the world for decades.
The ministry made a start with a group of 19 content creators from Nepal and Sri Lanka at the end of April, and the second group of about 15 influencers from the UAE visited in August. The initiative, the brainchild of the ministry’s external publicity (XP) division, has been backed by foreign secretary Vikram Misri and his predecessor Vinay Kwatra, and there are plans to expand it to other regions.
