KANAN PARMAR chats up new YouTube sensation Gaurav Taneja who has taken to promoting Indian destinations

A new sensation has emerged on YouTube and in an entirely new mould. Meet Gaurav Taneja, officially a pilot with Air Asia. No, he does not make his presence felt as a sensational pilot but as a vlogger promoting fitness and Indian destinations through his YouTube channels.

His travel and lifestyle channel has 2.1M+ subscribers and the fitness one 1.3+ million. But do not mistake this IITian to be just a vlogger. He takes his flying seriously too.

Taneja is a proud winner of the ‘The Great Visioners Award 2020’ for Best Lifestyle and Travel Content Creation. A tweet by the YT Creators India lists him second among the top five travel and vlogging creators in India.

Taneja, all of 33, says he is joyfully immersed in the world of flying, fitness and travelling. A graduate from IIT Kharagpur in civil engineering, he decided to reach the skies with an aviation degree.

“As a teenager, flying fascinated me. I could hear the engines of the flight from my rooftop. I first flew IndiGo in 2011, both in the domestic and international sectors and then joined AirAsia, flying only domestic,” he tells you.

Taneja started his first YouTube channel FitMuscle TV back in November 2016 to give his viewers fitness tips. With more than 1.31M subscribers today, he is a proud professional.

“Since childhood, I have been interested in bodybuilding. Now I follow my passion by giving fitness advice. At the gym, everybody would ask me for tips and not the instructors. So, my gym instructor fired me,” Taneja says with a chuckle.

That’s when he has his eureka moment and decided to open his YouTube fitness channel.

He started his second YouTube channel Flying Beast in December 2017 where he vlogs lifestyle and travel. Here he features his co-pilot wife and three-year-old daughter Kaira too.

“Initially we started sharing fitness and health-related advice on FitMuscle Tv, but soon realised that the platform was suggesting our vlogs only to people who were into fitness. So, we decided to start a new channel about lifestyle,” Taneja says.

Being a successful YouTuber was a vertical four-five years climb for him in a medium new to him. “For FitMuscle TV, my scientific approach in body building and gymming worked well. For Flying Beast our chemistry as a couple worked out,” he asserts.

This year, he aims to showcase unexplored places in India and promote tourism as he feels that there are many places in the country that are beautiful travel destinations but remain unexplored because people find foreign tourism more fascinating. “Kashmir is so beautiful that people need not visit Switzerland,” he says.

Taneja’s favourite travel destination is Vanya Dam in Kerala. Then there is the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat and the pristine glory of Meghalaya. Arunachal Pradesh is the next on his list.

As a YouTuber he said his golden moment was a meeting with former US President Barack Obama. “There was a conference in Singapore organised by The Growth Faculty where Google had invited my wife and me. From the Asia-Pacific region, only six content creators were invited and we were amongst those. Obama attended that conference to talk about what kind of leaders the world requires. Ritu and I got some personal time with him. We told him that we have a voice, there are so many people following us and we can contribute our bit in whatever way we can to bring a change in the society,” he narrates.

Gaurav has his set of fans too. Frequent flyer Aksh Baghla recently tweeted a photo of him with Taneja and captioned it saying that every time he travels via Air Asia, he wishes that he gets a chance to meet the Flying Beast (Taneja).

Being a celebrity-pilot, Gaurav plans his monthly schedule to match his flying roster. “I utilise every minute of my day in the pursuit of promoting India and fitness,” he tells you.

Most may think Taneja must require a big team and sponsors to help him manage his YouTube channels but he says, “We fund our own videos and this is the best part about vlogging that we don’t need a big team. Our camera is all we need.”

Taneja is also a responsible husband and father. He met his wife Ritu Rathee while working at IndiGo. Rathee is a pilot who flies IndiGo. 

Taneja is a votary of outdoors and feels the depression assailing the younger generation is all about being cooped up. “People shouldn’t spend so much time indoors and there should be minimal connection with digital multimedia. People should socialise with friends rather than through Facebook,” he advises.