We recently connected with HETAL DESAI and have shared our conversation below.

Hi HETAL, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

23 years of my life I had created back home in India that included family, friends, culture, education, career, tremendous amount of memories and lot more, all of that was left behind, 23 years of my life was left behind because I blindly trusted a man and decided to marry him within just a day of meeting him. The risk I took over 16 years ago was well worth it. Today after 16 years when I look back it, it feels like I took the biggest risk of my life by marring a stranger who was from a completely different continent, left home and came to the states with just two suitcases, and started a whole new life from ground zero. And then life became all about taking risks and fulfilling them to create this new life we have created here that includes our beautiful children, exceptional academics, thriving careers, happy home and lot more!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Growing up in India I was always surrounded by this incredible culture and one of the biggest part of Indian culture is the FOOD. I brought this incredible culture from back home and I felt a strong urge to share that with the world through my food creativity. That is where “My Vegetarian Roots” was born! MVR is my space where I share my culture through food creation, spread awareness of vegetarianism and most precious reason is that all the cultural food documentation is being used by so many who are away from home. I have a hope that one day my own daughters will refer to my cultural creativity and utilize it to bring much needed comfort in their life through food that is a great combination of learnings from my family and touch of my creativity.

I am beyond proud of my self for creating my well driven website using my technical expertise as well as food creativity, creating a large heavily engaged social community through multiple social media platforms, making my creativity available to thousand of my followers and getting sweet messages from them on daily basis expressing how grateful they are for my content creation. One of the biggest thing a content creator can ask for is that their work gets utilized, and I am so grateful for all my followers to feel so strongly about my recipes and trusting my work.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

This question makes me think of myself when I had just thought about starting my own journey. The first social media platform I had thought about starting my journey on was Instagram. Back in 2019 when I was thinking about sharing my journey on IG, I had no idea what Instagram was. I did not even have an account on IG. I learned about IG and how to create a website simply by googling. First step was to create my website. When I published my site, I only had less five recipes on it with poor picture quality and barely any knowledge of what to write on a blog post. My goal was to create content, not growing following. So I started creating one recipe at a time, one IG post at a time and today we are a family of more than 200k on IG. I learned what my followers liked and what they sought for when they came to my page. Which helped me carved out the plan of what to share. And that organically lead to a growing engaging community.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of my journey is that my audience truly utilizes my work so well. It makes me feel like all my hard work is paid off when it is being used. Small things I share truly makes big differences in someone’s life which is honestly the most rewarding part of this journey. Documenting and sharing my creativity means preserving my culture and spreading the awareness globally. My generation might be the last generation to see our mothers, grand mothers and great grand mothers make such cultural foods for their family. My creative outlet is my tiny efforts to preserve out culture by documenting such valuable passed down creations from our families!    

Contact Info:

• Website: https://myvegetarianroots.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myvegetarianroots/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myvegetarianroots/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/myvegetarianroots/
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/myvegetarianroots/

Image Credits
All picture are taken by me