Influencing With Hetal: Chef and Home Decor and Food Influencer

After earning a bachelor’s in biochemistry and a master’s in biomedical sciences, Hetal worked in healthcare before making a major career change. She appeared as a contestant on the “MasterChef” reality competition show, where she earned sixth place. The show helped her make the career transition into freelance recipe creator, marketing consultant and food blogger.

“When I came off the show, I started using social media to build my community. So I was doing the live tweeting and the live posts and sharing recipes that are similar but not exact to what I made on the show, just to build my community and take those 15 seconds of fame and try and build it into a career.”

Hetal was able to take her content creation side hustle full-time during the pandemic, when she lost her marketing clients due to budget cuts. She leveraged live streams and her other content to grow her audience beyond viewers of the “MasterChef” show.

“I just focused full-time on my Instagram and really built my following beyond just the hardcore ‘MasterChef’ fans, and I was able to grow it to over a hundred thousand through the pandemic doing lives.”

As her following grew, she was featured in publications like The New York Times, Food and Wine Magazine and The Washington Post. Since then, she’s contributed to Bon Appétit, sharing recipes like her family’s Diwali Coconut Doughnuts. She also ran an online bakery for some time.

“Baking, that’s where I started sharing and carved my niche in the industry, which is Indian-inspired baked goods,” she said.

While the career transition was scary at the time, Hetal says baking is similar to the sciences in many ways. 

“Baking is also a science,” Hetal said. “When I was in school, my organic chemistry professor told me, ‘Hey, if you can bake, you’ll pass lab.’ So I started baking initially with box cake mix — no shame in that. And then, I moved on to more challenging things, like making things from scratch. And I realized I really enjoyed it. There was a zen to it.”

“I like the predictability. The A type in me very much is appeased by baking —  the exactness, the preciseness, the accuracy. I enjoy it a lot,” she added.

She offers this advice for anyone wanting to make a career switch, especially into content creation: Keep your 9-to-5 until the side hustle reaches a certain level.

“I would love to say, ‘Just pursue your dreams and your passions and the money will come,’” Hetal said. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case for everyone. Few and far between get that. So work hard on your side hustle and when it starts making enough income and you feel like you’d be able to match your current income, if not exceed it, that’s when you know, OK, it’s time to go hard.”

Hetal also emphasizes working with brands that match your values. For her, that means being able to showcase her culture and Indian heritage in her content, especially recipes.

“Work with brands that really not only work for you, but also for your audience. It’s OK to say no if it doesn’t fit your values,” she said. “I think a lot of people get really excited when brands want to work with them, so they say yes to everyone and it ends up diluting the trust that your followers have in you.”

Fun fact: Hetal has participated in IZEA campaigns, showcasing her cooking and baking skills.

As for the future of her work, Hetal hopes to develop home and kitchen products. She currently has product partnerships, including a jewelry collaboration.

“I love doing collaborations with not just other content creators, but other brands that really just showcase my creativity. I’m a creative person. I like designing things, I like creating things. And I pick a lot of small, typically South Asian-owned businesses to collaborate with, and I’m in it with them,” she said.  

“Most of them are inspired by handcrafts and textiles and the culture of India,” she added. “Having tangible goods is worth having, especially if you have a very engaged audience. They’re going to be more than excited to support you and your business.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.