Miss Malini was the OG influencer of India. Beginning her career as a radio jockey at Radio One, she rose to fame in 2008 with her trailblazing blog, MissMalini.com, where she covered topics related to Bollywood, fashion, beauty, and lifestyle.
But how did she begin her journey?
“It has been transformations because it started 15 years ago,” she recalled recent episode of Aleena Dissects. “Just to put that into context, this is before Instagram existed.”
Originally writing in a column in the Mid-Day newspaper called “Malini’s Mumbai”, a trip with friends to Dubai was the push she needed to start a blog of her own.
“It really started as my personal, online digital diary of all the fun things I do,” she said, and added, “Over the years, it’s kind of evolved. It became more of a magazine of sorts, and we expanded it to cover fashion, beauty and travel.”
Traction truly began with her “celebrity spotting” posts, where she was able to get the word out about prominent celebrities before newspapers could. One of her most memorable “key points” of her blog included an experience where her friend spotted Katrina Kaif and Ranbir Kapoor together on a flight, as well as an unexpected encounter with Salman Khan at China House at 2 am in the morning, prompting a flurry of reporting.
In the late 2000s, the words “creator” or “influencer” did not exist in the industry. MissMalini.com was the first blog out there, making it a novel experience for everyone.
“It takes a long time to get that relationship with people, and that comfort zone,” she explained. “They always knew that I’m not looking to write something negative or trying to clickbait them. They would generally be happy, shiny stories, or nice pictures from inside a party. Overtime, people started to recognize me.”
“I think that was the first blog out there, so it was new for everyone,” she added. “There was no Twitter or Instagram, so they used to get all of their information from Miss Malini.”
Miss Malini was also one of the first people out there who understood the importance of setting up a personal “brand” – a must-have for all businesses.
“I didn’t even do it by design,” she revealed. “I think it’s just my personality. Whatever I did, I did it as “me”. Because suddenly, the blog was my playing field to do with it as I wanted. So, I would edit it as I wanted, I would do the colors and I would play around. I learned a lot of these things when I was working with MTV.”
Miss Malini’s transition from blogging to business was also extremely fluid. She received helpful advice from her husband and partner of fifteen years, who had been studying abroad at the time, and from Mike Melli, who offered to help her.
Her first collaboration was for a pair of Levi jeans, where she was flown to Delhi and interviewed Ileana D’Cruz and Jacqueline Fernandez and Chitrangada Singh.
“The business end got formulated as we realized that there’s something here,” she said. Someone offered to buy her blog for 25 lakhs, along with a fixed salary, leading her, Mike and her husband to realize that it was probably worth infinitely more.
“I said ‘Look, I’ll do this if you guys do it with me’,” she said. “You have to stuck it true to the end. And they were true to their word, they’ve been my business partners for 15 years.”
Miss Malini has now gotten acquired by Good Glamm Group, a content-to-commerce company with multiple physical brands and media platforms.
“We are 100% owned by The Good Glamm Group,” she said, and added. “I’m still the face because the brand is Miss Malini, but we have a very robust team that’s run by a whole bunch of people.”
“On the media side, I don’t run day-to-day operations on what’s getting covered, but that’s a lot of things that I’m still a part of,” she concluded, and added. “And I’m always coming up with new concepts and ideas for the brands.”
However, these were not Miss Malini’s only revelation in the episode. Sitting down with Aleena, founder and CEO of Social Media Dissect, the OG influencer opened up about her wealth of experiences in the blogging, business and entertainment industry and the lessons she has learned. From iconic milestones to future goals to advice for aspiring publishers, Miss Malini covers it all.
For more details, watch the full Aleena Dissects podcast episode here:
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