Passion for food turns Influencer to Entrepreneur
Jodhpur, July 24: Back in 2015, when social media was still on the verge of growing, no one thought that a blog started as a hobby would connect so many people with their own city’s taste stories. Blogging can be a tough pastime or business even while living in a big city with all the inspiration and lots of probable content available. But, for a small city like Jodhpur, it was a hard nut to crack and that too regarding food blogging. Then, one fateful day in 2015, the founder of Jodhpur’s leading food blog, Genius Jain, posted his first food picture, and since then, there has been no looking back.
In the words of Genius, Jodhpur is known for its rich heritage. And to anyone who has lived or travelled the city, will agree that the element that adds the most to this treasure is FOOD. His blog, @JodhpurFoodie, is trying to introduce that food to the World through Instagram. With more than 17k followers on Instagram, Jodhpur Foodie is the pioneer of food blogging in Jodhpur. The USP of the JodhpurFoodie blog is their authenticity, as it has never done any paid promotions or paid collaborations. That kept the authenticity high to the audience. This blog is about the newly opened cafes and trending dishes of new restaurants, but also it introduces some old hidden food gems to its followers and the next generation.
‘JodhpurFoodie‘ is not only breaking the odds in the city but also doing various activities for the hospitality industry of Jodhpur to unite them and letting them grow as a community. It organised a couple of major events in the city for the first time, namely the ‘Jodhpur Food Awards’ in 2018 and ‘Super Chef Jodhpur’ in 2019. ‘Jodhpur Food Awards’ was the first-ever event in the history of Jodhpur, which brought all the pioneers, leading food outlet owners and young foodprenuers under one roof and was highly appreciated for same. In 2019, ‘Jodhpur Foodie’ gave a huge platform to the home chefs and hidden talents of the Jodhpur food industry to showcase their talent in an elaborated set up for the first time, in the form of ‘Super Chef Jodhpur’, which was again a huge success and was highly admired by the public at large. The second season of both the events was in the pipeline, but Covid’s events had been postponed to avoid large public gatherings.
When asked about his inspiration to keep going with new content creation, Genius said that there are many challenges in the field of food blogging. More popularity comes with more responsibility, and a good blogger always has to maintain some high standards for an audience without losing authenticity in greed of collaborations and promotions. His greatest inspiration to keep going is the love and faith of followers on Jodhpur Foodie.
That’s not it! Levelling up, Genius Jain started his own food outlet, Rolls Roy, in 2019. His food venture aims at providing a complete meal in the form of Rolls, which are healthy, pocket friendly, and has a great combination of world cuisine flavours in the Indian set-up. Rolls Roy has already made a mark in the city because of their delicious pure veg Rolls. Rolls Roy has a clear vision of serving delicious rolls with the sole purpose of providing quick snacking at pocket-friendly prices. But again, as he said earlier, everything comes up with new challenges. The world inside the kitchen is really different and challenging. There was a lot of happenings every second when an order arrived, but that’s the fun part.
Rolls Roy is a ‘Rolls Only’ outlet because typical Indian taste buds never get satisfied without having Indian bread. And it’s not just Rolls; Roll is a complete meal itself. Rolls Roy understands the uniquely distinct taste of India, and it focuses on satisfying the flavourful spirit of Indian taste buds. A fusion of Indian bread with international fillings is the forte of Rolls Roy.
The idea behind 100% Veg Roll Outlet was to cater to India’s increasingly savvy and demanding vegetarian audience by introducing them to vegetarian rolls as they have never seen before. Vegetarian Rolls have long been seen as boring, owing to the limited options that restaurants offer, and ‘Rolls Roy’ is trying to break that myth. However, there has been a recent worldwide trend towards vegetarianism on both humanitarian and health grounds.
Genius, being a visionary, has tried to communicate and connect with his concept of Rolls Roy with more people and hence has ventured into franchising ‘Rolls Roy’ all over India. As per Genius, Everybody talks about adopting homegrown brands these days, but people invest billions in brands like Subway, McDonald’s or Pizza Hut when it comes to franchises. In the founder’s words, “I wonder why people don’t start something of their own or at least take franchise of homegrown brands. They can save billions for the nation as well as themselves.” Rolls Roy is offering franchises just under 5 lacs with all support to entrepreneurs who wants to start their own business.’
Among various models offered as a franchise, Rolls Roy has a cloud kitchen model for the predicted life after covid situations. This brand aims to introduce a unique experience in terms of food and do wonders in the Indian food Industry.
Lastly, when asked about his opinion on Digital Networking during covid times, Genius emphasizes the necessity of the same. In his words, ‘I marketed my outlet Rolls Roy just through Instagram and got an amazing response. I realised the power of social media marketing, and I decided to share that experience and expertise of all these years to people.’ Apart from being connected via digital media, Jodhpur Foodie is conducting workshops on ‘Instagram essentials’ where people can learn how businesses and blogs grow successfully on digital platforms.