New Delhi: When two online platforms that tell heartwarming human stories began to fight publicly over storytellers’ rights and threatened to lawyer up, it quickly turned into an open season for everyone on social media. From former employees to paid content marketers to even Humans of New York, everyone had something to say about Humans of Bombay and its founder, Karishma Mehta.
Mehta started her Instagram page – now an unlisted private company – with the aim of cataloguing stories of ordinary Mumbaikars. However, she began to receive flak after filing a lawsuit against another photoblog, People of India, in the Delhi High Court over alleged “copyright infringement”.
This wasn’t received well by Brandon Stanton, founder of the Humans of New York page that inspired all ‘humans of’ chapters that exist today. He rebuked Mehta’s blog on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “You can’t be suing people for what I’ve forgiven you for.” Humans of Bombay responded with a sneering tweet, calling Stanton’s intervention “a cryptic assault on our efforts to protect our intellectual property,” which snowballed into unabated social media rage against the platform.
The online drama prompted Humans of Bombay to issue another statement with a more subdued tone.
“We are grateful to HONY & Brandon for starting this storytelling movement,” it said, clarifying that the suit was related to the IP in its posts and was “not about storytelling at all”.
But the backlash hasn’t stopped Mehta from going ahead with her lawsuit.
“The case is about copying the story, the photographs and the videos created by Humans of Bombay and the hard work of the team at HOB, which is being plagiarised by People of India,” Abhishek Malhotra, the advocate representing Mehta’s company in the case, told ThePrint.
War of the storytellers
Mehta started Humans of Bombay in 2014 – an idea she claimed she stumbled upon “completely randomly and out of the blue”.
In a recently resurfaced clip from the 2017 TEDxIIFT event, Mehta revealed that the page got a thousand likes within the first two hours and had 10,000 likes in a week.
“That period was a high of its own, to start something new and exciting… to be known was amazing,” she added. But Mehta, who pursued a double major in economics and business at the University of Nottingham, also spoke about the “immense sacrifices” she made to amass such a significant social media following.
“It [Humans of Bombay] was completely bootstrapped and self-run,” said Mehta, claiming that she didn’t make any money for the first three years. She used “pocket money” from her parents to survive while simultaneously featuring in an article in Forbes Asia.
Over the years, Mehta’s venture has dealt with its fair share of controversies. Her page also raised eyebrows in 2019, when it ran a five-part series on Prime Minister Narendra Modi just ahead of Lok Sabha elections that year. In April 2023, Mehta became part of a panel discussion in Delhi that marked the 100th episode of Modi’s Mann Ki Baat.
The People of India page came to life much later in 2019. And going by its social media visibility, its rise has been meteoric. While Humans of Bombay amassed 2.7 million followers on Instagram, 1.4 million on Facebook and over 9 lakh YouTube subscribers in nine years, People of India has clocked 1.5 million Instagram followers and more than 6 lakh YouTube subscribers in just four years.
Since the uproar broke, both People of India and its founder, Drishti Saxena, have remained conspicuously silent. No lawyer turned up from their side during the online hearing of the case on 18 September, and they haven’t released any statement either. However, the page seems unfazed by the lawsuit; it has now opened an X account and continues to post content on Instagram and Facebook.
ThePrint has reached out to People of India and its founder over Instagram. The report will be updated after they respond.
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Monetising far past appropriate limits?
Stanton’s sharp backlash against Humans of Bombay for “appropriating” his work and monetising far past anything he’d “feel comfortable doing on HONY” has opened a can of worms.
One social media user shared their unpleasant experience of reaching out to Humans of Bombay for a paid feature story, claiming it charged as high as Rs 3-4 lakh per post in 2021.
While working for a delivery company I contacted HoB for a feature around our delivery agents. They gave that same slideshow someone else shared but the prices were 3-4lakh per post. On talking to them further, they repeatedly tried to dissuade 1/n https://t.co/UeUosRzWe0
— ✨ Gojo's Cat ✨ (@thefeyfeline) September 24, 2023
Another Instagram page complained about the company’s toxic work culture.
“Multiple people in my network have worked with HoB and left within a year due to the horrible work culture, low pay and insane behaviour from the ‘founder’,” the post stated.
A look at the company’s website proves Stanton’s contention is not unfounded. The site details Humans of Bombay’s various ‘collaboration options’ – reels, live sessions, micro Instagram stories to CSR campaigns – and reveals its merchandise partnership with clothing brand The Souled Store.
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Karishma won’t stop her fight
Humans of Bombay lawyers are gearing up for the next hearing on 11 October despite mounting anger on social media.
“Everyone making comments on social media is doing it purely on the basis of what they have come to know from others. They don’t know the background. So, it’s very half-backed information, which is very dangerous,” said Malhotra.
People of India has “blatantly copied” Humans of Bombay content, he said, adding that it is “unethical and unfair” of them to continue with their practices.
“There is a lot of hard work put in by the team at Humans of Bombay in terms of researching, curating, writing, validating, and finally publishing a story,” he said, adding that the Delhi High Court has made an initial observation of “possible evidence” of copying.
“However, no order of injunction has been passed as the court wanted to give an opportunity to POI to come and defend their stand,” he added.
Supplementing its plagiarism claims, Humans of Bombay has highlighted over 10 identical stories from People of India.
“The manner in which Humans of Bombay tells stories of people is by researching and finding subjects, validating that person’s story, doing audio and audio-visual stories and creating a literary narrative. All of these aspects are protected by the copyright law of India,” Malhotra said.
Humans of Bombay doesn’t have a problem with People of India’s stories, the lawyer clarified. What they want is for People of India to “do their own research and do their own stills, photography and videos.”
Today, Humans of Bombay has over 5,100 posts on Instagram and 682 YouTube videos. It includes chapters about Modi and features celebrities like Kareena Kapoor, Sushmita Sen, Anurag Kashyap, Naseeruddin Shah and countless others. Its stories are no longer limited to the aam nagrik of Mumbai.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)