As a content creator, Aashna Hegde has come a long way. In an exclusive chat with The Pioneer, she speaks to us about her journey, her transition to singing, and more.
Tejal Sinha
Change is inevitable and constant. True that! We’ve not just heard about it; many of us have seen the change in the way things work. Gone are the days when all that one wished for was a 9-to-5 job. Today, all that one wishes for is creativity and talent, not just money. Of course, money is surely why we’d want to work, but creativity has come to be on par with it.
One such profession that demands a lot of creativity and talent is content creation. It surely is! Today, open your Instagram, and you have so many amazing creators from across the globe who have their own specific genre that they choose to entertain their fans and audience. Making an impression of yourself on the audience in the right way is just not a piece of cake. And to create an impression, one thing that matters is how true you are to yourself.
Aashna Hegde, one of the most popular creators who has represented India on several global platforms, is one of those who’ll make you go ‘awwwww’ with her ‘Hi guys! Welcome back to my chaaanneelll’. We literally can hear her saying this as we write it (hahaha). One thing that you’ll always find common in her comments section is how her fans appreciate her for being one of the most transparent creators who makes the audience feel a heart-to-heart connection with her. While Aashna had made a big name for herself in the world of content creation with short-format content, ironically, she was never really into it. But it seems like her destiny was meant to be this.
“I never imagined that I’d even have a journey like this,” enthused Aashna. “It’s unbelievable that this is my life, and I’m so happy that I’ve met so many amazing people through this journey. The fact that I have a community of people that I feel comfortable sharing my life with is something else! They’ve enabled me to achieve so many of my dreams. Dreams that weren’t even a possibility a few years ago. I’m just very grateful.”
Aashna wanted to be an actor, but for some reason, she didn’t see herself going through it. YouTube was something that she always wanted to do, but with no online presence, she later began making short-format content, and look now how far she’s come. “I actually wanted to make long-format videos because that was the kind of content I consumed. I wasn’t even into short-format content until I really got into it! But it was all unplanned, and I just went with the flow.”
Like many of us, Aashna’s mom has been her biggest influence throughout her life. She’s the daughter of renowned actress Pakhi Hegde. If you’ve been following Aashna since the beginning, you’d know it’s not been an easy life for her and her family. And so, watching her mom over the years constantly hustling to make ends meet, made her realise that nothing came easy or without hard work. “She never said it in words, but her actions made me want to work for my dreams and learn from my own mistakes.”
Soon she made her debut in the music world with Mika Singh’s Soni Gujarat Ni, and to our surprise, she later sang her first-ever song, Befikr, along with her best friend Tanzeel Khan. A soulful transition in her journey, we must say. So, are we going to see more of her singing? “I never thought I could do is sing,” affirms Aashna. “I’ve always enjoyed singing in my personal time; music makes me forget about the little problems; I feel present! But I’m not sure if I see myself pursuing it full-time! Maybe? Maybe not.”
Once you get into the spotlight, you do get a lot of stardom. But something that comes along is unnecessary hate and fandoms getting into your personal space, and it was for Aashna too. She’d, in fact, many times opened up about the issue through her videos. “I understand that there’s curiosity about the person you like or follow, but as humans, we also should have some boundaries and respect other people’s personal space! I had started letting things really get to me, and it put my mental health in a very dark place! But at the end of the day, like Rihanna said, ‘people are going to talk whether you do good or bad. So why let it bother you?’”
Coming back to her vlogs, even a day at home becomes work or a vlog day for her. So, we wondered, how does she draw the line between private and public aspects of her life? “I don’t think I’ll ever have an answer to this. There are no strict rules for me either. I like to share my life with my community but at the same time, I’m mindful to not share too much now. Some parts of my life should belong to me, and everyone is very understanding of that,” gleefully answers Aashna, who feels that if she starts to make hard and fast rules, then things wouldn’t feel organic. And so she leaves the overthinking to ‘Editing-Aashna’.
With the content creation world growing so fast day by day, there are so many names joining the race in terms of content creation. There’s surely a lot of pressure on her, and she believes it too. “I don’t think about competing.
I love that I move at my own pace! Of course, the feeling of not doing enough is always lurking, but we all have our own journeys. And if this is a race, I’m trying to enjoy every lap,” signs off Aashna, who feels, “I wanted to hustle so much that I always forgot to enjoy the results of that hustle. So for this year, I want to focus more on wellness and my mental health! I want to focus on my passion projects. I want to enjoy what I’m doing, and I want to be present in the moment.”
