Khalid Al Ameri Emirati video creator shares his visit to Mumbai
Khalid Al Ameri Emirati video creator shares his visit to Mumbai
Khalid Al Ameri is on his maiden Mumbai visit and articulates that his first visit was to visit Bollywood’ King Khan Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Mannat’ abode.
While in Mumbai Khalid Al Ameri he took to the streets for a stroll talked about food, the culture, and of course on actor Shah Rukh Khan.
He loves Indian weather, the food, the culture- and gives a high five to street hawkers who flock to him saying ‘habibi!’
Khalid Al Ameri, much popular for his family friendly content where he travels to different countries for exploration and puts videos of it on his social media, was in Mumbai for the first time.
On the first day, he was dressed in the traditional kandura, interesting onlookers as he took a stroll at the sea side in front of Shah Rukh Khan’s Mannat.
He gets chatting with the media team after a couple of clicks,
He revealed that, the energy of this country warms him up every time. As a creator, he feeds off energy… there are so many beautiful stories to tell.
Ameri’s journey in the last couple of years has taken him to Kerala, Chennai, Amritsar, Assam and Old Delhi.
He went on to add that earlier, he would only be here for the big days like festivals, this time he decided to just do it for himself and not limited to a specific day. He visited Old Delhi as a part of his Ramadan series, and for him, it’s been one of the craziest places he has been to. Whenever he travels to India, there is always a big connection as he sees between UAE and Indian population. People don’t realise how close the tie is between UAE and India,” gushes the YouTuber.
In fact, he bumped into a fan in his Mumbai hotel’s elevator- who lives in Dubai!
As he with the media team strolled on the streets, his face lit up no sooner he saw street food stalls.
The next item on his list was eating an authentic Mumbai vada pav. He did a video on vada pav in Dubai once, and people flooded the comments section saying ‘if you want to have vada pav, go to Mumbai, else don’t talk’ The street food here is on another level.
In south India, they son’t have much of a street food culture. He was very excited to try out pav bhaji, street side Maggi, bhelpuri, sev puri… he also loved pani puri.
He celebrated an important day recently with the Indian embassy in UAE. Embassies usually don’t have a lot of street food, but here, after the formalities, they had an entire section in the back for pani puri. His record is 20,” laughs the 40-year-old, who is hosted in India by White Rivers Media.
Ameri, with a following of around three million on YouTube and the same on Instagram, clearly has cracked the formula to get the views and numbers on his content. But he realises that the audience’ attention span has gone down. That’s how the algorithm works. Which is why he too would put out a lot of shorts. But then he realised that he needs to tell his stories in the time they deserve.
He had done a short video on the influence the Indian community had on UAE, and Amitabh Bachchan had tweeted it. He still has that screenshot,” he beams.
He continues, “A lady stopped him in Dubai once, she said ‘Khaled, her entire family watches his video’ Something clicked in his head- imagine how amazing it is that it can be a grandmother in her 80s and a granddaughter who is seven, and both can watch my video and enjoy. That’s the content he wants to make. He is inspired by family friendly creators, like Rowan Atkinson, Mr Bean, who worked past the boundaries of content and language.
About Khalid, after graduating from Stanford University, he was featured in the 2020 list of ‘100 Most Powerful Arabs’ by Gulf Business as well as being first social media personality to be awarded a Dubai Star in the Downtown Dubai Walk of Fame.
News Edit K.V.Raman
