Pranali Gupta did not set out to become a social media content creator.
In 2019, when a friend suggested she should try it, the Hong Kong-born Indian said no, as she was “not the type of person who likes taking photos or videos of myself”.
However, Gupta, who speaks fluent Cantonese, warmed to the idea of having a platform where she could help other Hongkongers understand more about her bicultural identity.
“[My Cantonese friend] was like, ‘Don’t you get tired answering the same questions? You can just shoot a video and answer everyone.’ That was her way of convincing me,” recalls Gupta.
So, in January 2020, the media industry professional uploaded a video of herself visiting an Indian eyebrow-threading service in Hong Kong. Her online journey snowballed from there.
“I didn’t think it was going to go on for this long,” says the 32-year-old, who is known online as New Dellily – a name inspired by New Delhi, the capital city of India and where her mother is from.
“The first video became popular because everyone was like, ‘Why is this brown person speaking Cantonese and why is her Cantonese so good?’ It caused a lot of [online] curiosity, and people were very surprised.
“I would say 95 per cent of my circle are local Chinese people. When I first met them, they were like, ‘I would never go to India in my life. I’d be so scared.’ Fast forward three years, they’re like, ‘I would go with you. Can you take me?’ The more they understand [Indian culture], the more fascinated they are [by India].”
Gupta vlogs in Cantonese, English and Hindi about her life and heritage. She has more than 170,000 followers collectively across Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
From April to June 2024, she even hosted Hong Kong Born Foreigner, a 10-episode lifestyle show on Hong Kong television channel ViuTV, where she interviewed non-Chinese Hongkongers.
Through her content, she helps represent the city’s ethnic minority groups who might otherwise be seen as “foreign”.
“My dad moved here when he was 16, and my [India-born] parents have been in Hong Kong for over 30 years. Hong Kong is my main home, because everything I know is here,” she says.
After attending an international kindergarten, she was nearly rejected from a local, all-Cantonese primary school as the principal thought her inability to read and write in Chinese would affect her studies. It was, in some ways, true.
“The first two years were quite difficult,” she says. “I was the only non-Chinese student, I didn’t have any friends and when I came home from school, I didn’t have anyone to practise Cantonese with.”
Thankfully, her teachers went above and beyond to catch her up, while her mother hired – and fired – more than 10 private Cantonese tutors until one stuck: a university student who became something of an older sister to Gupta.
In time, her studies became easier and her Cantonese-speaking abilities helped her make friends with her classroom peers and even helped her get into the same hobbies, such as trading cards featuring Hong Kong and East Asian celebrities.
“One thing about Hong Kong people is that they may treat you differently because [you look different] but they don’t discriminate … there’s actually not a lot of [discrimination] once they can relate to you.”
Even now, her husband, also of Indian descent, will ask her to speak in Cantonese when they go out so that people will be friendlier to them, which she has experienced many times in Hong Kong.
For all that she has embraced being a Hongkonger, Gupta has remained in touch with her Indian roots by celebrating Indian festivals, going to the Hindu Temple in Happy Valley and visiting her relatives in India.
As a teenager, she went to a boarding school in the UK, which she says “opened my eyes a lot” because of the large South Asian population there.
“There were so many people from different cultures and backgrounds. I realised it’s not a big deal [to be different].
“They don’t ask where you’re from or what you eat at home, which I faced a lot growing up [in Hong Kong].”
Gupta returned to Hong Kong to study fashion marketing and branding at university, but found it difficult to find work after her graduation.
“People even said to me during interviews, ‘We prefer someone more local,’” she says.
It took her six months, and her father’s connections, to find her first job, while many of her friends from university secured theirs within a month or so of graduating.
She now works in the lifestyle media industry, where she realised “there were companies that would hire me for what I want to do”.
To date, Gupta has more than 100 videos on her YouTube channel, with one of the most popular being a Q&A video in which she and her husband debunk some of the misconceptions that Hong Kong Chinese people may have about Indian couples.
Her most viewed Instagram video, with more than 57,000 likes, is a skit about what Indian parents are like.
Her content that focuses on the misconceptions around Indian culture performs the best, she says, but food videos also do very well.
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In the five-and-a-half years since she began posting videos online, Gupta has received many encouraging comments from other non-Chinese Hongkongers who feel their experiences have been validated through her storytelling.
“I’m very grateful whenever I get comments from other Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalis and anyone from the ethnic minority community who tell me that I have helped them somehow. Even a small video can make a change,” she says.
“At the end of the day, I always remind myself I’m not doing this for fame or money, but merely to spread awareness of my culture.”