Kamiya Jani has quietly reshaped what it means to be a modern storyteller. Where many digital creators trade depth for virality, she has built a platform that marries journalistic rigor with the warmth of human travel narratives a combination that turned a passion project into one of India’s most influential travel and food media brands. What began as a personal blog has become Curly Tales: a multimedia discovery platform that informs travel choices, surfaces culinary culture, and converts millions of casual viewers into a highly engaged community.
From the outset, Kamiya’s trajectory was atypical. She arrived in the digital world with a pedigree in business journalism, having anchored and reported for CNBC, Bloomberg and ET NOW. That background taught her two habits that distinguish Curly Tales’ output: an insistence on accuracy and a disciplined approach to storytelling. When she left the newsroom in 2016 to follow a different curiosity, she did not abandon professional standards she transplanted them into a new medium, scripting, researching and producing content with the editorial care of a broadcast journalist. The result is content that feels both spontaneous and dependable: candid, immersive footage underpinned by coherent narratives and fact-checked detail.
Curly Tales’ growth is rooted in this tension between craft and accessibility. Early posts that highlighted street food stalls and hidden local corners resonated precisely because they were neither gimmicky nor aspirational-only; they were serviceable and immediate. Video became the accelerant. Kamiya’s approachable camera presence conversational, curious, exacting turned viewership into participation: audiences didn’t merely watch; they trusted her recommendations and followed her footsteps. Today that trust is measurable. Curly Tales commands an audience in the millions across platforms, reflecting an evolution from single-creator blog to significant media enterprise.
Scale, however, did not remove complexity. The production standards Kamiya demanded required a team to match her rigor: writers, videographers, editors and strategists who could translate episodic travel experiences into digestible content at high cadence. Behind even the briefest ten-minute video sits days of planning securing permissions, balancing local sensitivities, and mapping logistics. And then there is the algorithmic reality: platform distribution is volatile, and success depends as much on creative judgment as on technical experimentation. Curly Tales navigates both disciplines. The team experiments constantly with formats and length, A/B tests thumbnails and opens dialogue with viewers in real time, while preserving the brand’s editorial spine.
The pandemic crystallized Kamiya’s strengths as a resilient operator and community builder. When physical travel halted, Curly Tales pivoted quickly to virtual experiences and home-based content. “Lockdown Recipes” turned kitchens into centres of cultural exchange; archival travel footage and interactive live sessions offered vicarious escape and continuity for an audience whose appetite for discovery persisted despite closed borders. This pivot did more than retain viewers, it deepened relationships, converting passive consumership into a participatory community that shared recipes, travel memories and local tips. Curly Tales also launched socially meaningful initiatives during this period, most notably the “Sandese Aate Hain” project in partnership with JK Paper: a handwritten-letter campaign engaging schoolchildren across dozens of cities to write messages to India’s soldiers. The effort demonstrated how a digital brand can translate reach into civic connection, reviving tactile authenticity in an increasingly digital era.
Recognition followed practical impact. Across industry stages, Kamiya has been honoured for both influence and craft: Top Social Influencer (Upper Story, 2018), a TEDx talk at NIT Srinagar the same year, the World Marketing Congress award for content leadership in 2019, Exhibit Magazine’s Best Food Influencer in 2022 and, significantly, the 2024 National Creators Award for Best Travel Creator, presented at a national ceremony by the Prime Minister. These accolades matter less as trophies and more as validation that a creator-led media business can shape cultural narratives at scale while retaining editorial integrity.
Kamiya’s public persona – vibrant, fashion-forward, adventurous is authentic, not performative. Her aesthetic sensibility (from bold lehengas to luxury brands) complements her storytelling: style becomes another way to express cultural engagement rather than an end in itself. Food, meanwhile, sits at the centre of Curly Tales’ ethos. Kamiya’s palate travels effortlessly from Mumbai chaat to Mexican tacos, signalling that culinary discovery is a universal entry point to deeper cultural appreciation. Her vlogs convey that food is simultaneously texture, history and social practice a portable anthropology accessible to millions.
Family and personal life are woven into this professional narrative. Her husband, Sammar Verma, and their daughter, Ziana, appear as co-travellers in the content and as crucial supports behind the scenes. The balance Kamiya negotiates between travel intensity and parental responsibilities is not anecdotal; it’s a core editorial choice that broadens Curly Tales’ appeal to parents and aspirational travellers who refuse to choose between family and exploration. In doing so, she reframes a common career narrative: ambition and family need not be mutually exclusive when logistical planning, delegation and a supportive ecosystem are present.
Looking ahead, Kamiya’s playbook balances ambition with discipline. Her stated roadmap envisions multilingual expansion, cross-border collaborations, and strategic growth into markets such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe. The proposition is straightforward: export India’s rich culinary and travel narratives while building local partnerships and adapting formats for region-specific consumption. It is an approach that acknowledges both cultural specificity and global curiosity. Strategy, after all, is not only about scaling audiences but about scaling trust and Curly Tales has demonstrated an ability to do both.
What makes Kamiya’s story compelling for business readers is the blend of craft, commerciality and civic intent. Curly Tales is a modern media company: editorially-driven, commercially viable, and socially conscious. Kamiya’s background in broadcast journalism gave her a toolkit; her leap into independent creation tested and refined it. Her team scaled the operation, her community validated it, and her initiatives proved that digital reach can be converted into tangible social value.
For creators and media entrepreneurs, the lessons are instructive. Start with craft. Treat distribution as an engineering problem. Invest in a team that can execute high-volume, high-quality storytelling. Finally, measure success not only in subscribers and impressions, but in how your platform strengthens human connection. In an era of transient trends and algorithmic churn, Kamiya Jani’s trajectory suggests a more durable model: build with integrity, scale with strategy, and use reach for resonance and the audience will follow.
Read Kamiya Jani’s magazine Feature
