WELLESLEY, MA–Malini Agarwal a.k.a MissMalini is probably India’s first and most famous celebrity blogger and social media personality, having pioneered Indian lifestyle blogging with MissMalini.com in 2008. Her content on Bollywood is par excellence and she has access to most Bollywood celebrities.
Her website today reaches over four million monthly visitors from over 200 countries, more than 80 percent of which are women, and has a social media following of over 7.5 million, according to her official bio.
What is next for Ms. Agarwal? She wants to increase coverage of South Indian stardom now.
“South Indian cinema is probably bigger,” Ms. Agarwal told INDIA New England News. She was recently in Boston to speak at the India Symposium at Babson College in Wellesley. “A lot of Bollywood actors have come from South India.”
Ms. Agarwal said that digital media is the future in India.
“Half a billion people in India are online, and 70 percent of them are under 35 years of age,” Ms. Agarwal said.
In her latest avatar as an author, Ms. Agarwal released her first book, To the Moon: How I Blogged My Way To Bollywood with reputed publishing house HarperCollins in January 2018 which ranked #3 on the India Top 10 non-fiction Bestseller List within the first two weeks of sales.
“My book has done well in Pakistan also. It has sold 7,000 copies in Pakistan,” said Ms. Agarwal, who is the Founder and Creative Director of MissMalini Entertainment, a leading new media network that creates highly engaging, multi-platform content geared towards India’s Internet Generation.
Ms. Agarwal was featured in the ET Women Ahead Listing of 2018 by The Economic Times and awarded the Women Super Achiever Award at Femina’s 5th World Women Leadership Congress & Awards. Ranked #1 on IMPACT’s 50 Most Influential Women in Media, Marketing and Advertising 2017, she was also recognized among business leaders to watch in Fortune India’s 40 Under 40 List as well as GQ’s 50 Most Influential Young Indians List and World Marketing Congress’s 50 Most Influential Digital Marketing Leaders Listing in 2017.
She was also featured as one of the Top 10 Young Business Women of 2016 by CNBC-TV18 at the Young Turks Summit, and declared as the #1 Digital Influencer in the world on SERMO’s Digital Influencer Index 2016.
Named India’s most famous blogger by the The Huffington Post and Forbes, Malini has been profiled by various international media outlets including BBC World (UK), Reuters, CNN (USA), DW (Germany), TV5 (France) and The Globe & Mail (Canada). She is also a regular feature in local publications such as Vogue India, Elle India, Grazia India, Hello! India, India Today, The Economic Times, Business Standard, NDTV Profit, among many others, and was even featured on CNBC’s Young Turks as a fast-growing media start- up to watch..
