Hyderabad: Meet Sreedevi Patlolla, who has now become a YouTube sensation after her video of making a mango pickle with ginger garlic paste went extremely popular with the netizens.
In June 2019, it was a normal day in her life and she was cooking for her family. But that day, her daughter Gayathri thought of making a video. As newbies, they filmed and edited the video with a basic video editing application and uploaded it on YouTube. In just a few days, the video got hundreds of thousands of views which was surreal to them.
“We were expecting a hundred views or so. But the views kept growing day by day,” she said. From that day, Sreedevi kept uploading videos. “I didn’t know anything about YouTube and social media then. My daughter asked me to choose a name for the channel. I said ‘Edo okati kalagura gampalekka pettu’ (name something like a melange) and the channel name turned out to be Kalagura Gampa at the end of the day,” she added.
She started making videos regularly and it was her simplicity that won followers. People found her ideas and recipes that her grandmother once shared with her quite interesting. She doesn’t cook in a fancy kitchen nor using decorative utensils. She cooks in an open kitchen picking fresh vegetables from her garden.
Her channel has more than 2.80 lakh subscribers so far. Apart from presenting secrets about local delicacies and recipes, she also shares tips on tending and cultivating a garden and healthy living.
Sreedevi had pleasing teenage years in the countryside before she moved to the city and the hustle and bustle. After residing in the heart of the city for more than three decades, she decided to get out of city life and built a house on the outskirts replicating a traditional village house with a dug well, verandah and rainwater harvesting system. It radiates an entirely different vibe from city life.
“The memories of days spent at my village in Parigi of Vikarabad district are still feel fresh in my mind and I was able to create a home in the outskirts just as I visualised. We managed to create ‘Patnam lo Palleturu’ – our little long-lost village in the city. We believe in living life and not in just surviving,” says Sreedevi adding that there are many people like her who wish to create village ambience in the city and she wants to take them down the memory lane through her videos. Her spacious garden has almost all the species of plants including some rare ones like vempalli, camachile, dragon fruit and a soap tree among many others.
Sreedevi is an entrepreneur too. She runs a business website ‘Kalagura Gampa’, where she sells natural and organic products.
Talking about how she began her entrepreneurial journey, she says, “I once reviewed indigo powder that works as natural hair dye when mixed with henna and uploaded the video on my channel. I researched extensively and experimented with it on myself before talking about the product. I received at least a thousand orders for that indigo powder in just a day. It boosted my confidence. I started the website and today it has more than 100 products – everything natural and tested,” says Sreedevi, who employed 19 people to pack and deliver the products.
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