We need to talk about food

Midway through our conversation with the organisers of India Food Bloggers Meet, we hit a rather unique problem. The four women do not have a group picture to share with us as they are yet to meet in person together as a team.

Nandita Iyer

Yet, organising what is expected to be the first event to invite food bloggers from all over the country didn't pose a major roadblock to the team. They remained connected through Skype meetings, endless to-do lists and their shared love for food and interest in blogging.

Food blogger and nutrition advisor Nandita Iyer is based in Bangalore, while Revati Upadhya, an entrepreneur and food blogger, is based in Goa. Their other two teammates and fellow food bloggers, Aparna Balasubramanian and Arundati Rao, are based in Goa and Hyderabad respectively.

Revati Upadhya

It all began with a casual, lazy lunch by the beach in Goa. "Arundati was visiting, so the three of us including Aparna, met up for lunch. It was then that we first thought of organising a meet for food bloggers from all over the country. And it just snowballed from there," recalls Upadhya, who runs a small scale home-based baking business.

The meet, which will be held on August 1 and 2 will host roughly 40 food bloggers and 10 speakers. "Everybody is calling themselves a blogger now, so there had to be some criteria to accept food bloggers for the meet," says Iyer.

"Participants should be regular bloggers," she adds. A call for enteries was placed through the event's Facebook page. "People had to send their blog details to us so that we could ensure they have been blogging regularly for at least a year," says Upadhya.

The idea behind organising the meet was to provide a platform for like-minded food bloggers to exchange ideas. Besides contests, there will be discussions where speakers will touch upon topics like food photography, how to self-publish your cookbook, food writing and social media for food bloggers.

Food is a subject area that is growing very quickly and we would like to make this an annual affair and have a theme or area that we could focus on every year," says Upadhya. "It is very tough to get people to come out of their city for a hobby like blogging. They think of it as a hobby that they do at home," points out Iyer.

"But so many people have moved on from blogging to food styling, conducting workshops... there are so many avenues for these food bloggers. So the idea behind the meet was to educate bloggers on ‘what next after blogging'. We want people to get that push and get inspired," she adds.