- Diti Goradia started posting fashion content when she began her investment banking job.
- Five years later, she’s worked with brands like Anita Dongre and Google Pixel on paid campaigns.
- She shares an email template she uses to pitch brands and how she balances banking with influencing.
Diti Goradia often works 12-hour days as a New York City investment banker at SMBC but focuses on her fashion and lifestyle content during breaks. In those 5, 10, or 20-minute intervals, she uploads new posts and reels to Instagram, emails brands to negotiate rates, or plans her content schedule.
“It’s hectic, but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Goradia said. “Balancing both careers has been very rewarding.”
The 26-year-old has posted fashion and lifestyle content to Instagram since she graduated in 2018 from Rutgers University. She wanted a creative outlet to express herself outside of her full-time banking job.
“Sometimes all you need is one person who encourages you to go for it, and for me, that was my husband,” she said. “He was definitely an ‘Instagram boyfriend,’ before we got married and took all the photos. If it wasn’t for him I might never have gotten started in the first place.”
Now, the part-time creator has 34,200 followers on Instagram where she posts details about the outfits she’s wearing, events she’s attending, and photoshoots she models in. Since January 2023, she’s made $16,250 by working with brands including Nordstrom, jewelry company Tanishq, skincare brand Aavrani, and fashion brand Papa Don’t Preach, which Insider verified with documentation she provided.
“Followers see the end product on Instagram and love it, but I think most people don’t realize that behind that photo or video is weeks’ worth of negotiations with brands and a ton of administrative work,” she said.
She emails with brands herself and usually films content during weekends
Goradia, who was born in India and moved to the US when she was 2 years old, said fashion helps her stay connected to her South Asian roots. She wears Indian clothing like lehengas and sarees in a lot of the content she posts and highlights products from South Asian-owned businesses like Aavrani.
As she posted consistently in her stories and grid, people in her comments and DMs began asking questions about exactly what she was wearing, where she got the outfits, and how they could shop for the same looks.
The first brand she partnered with reached out to her in March 2020, two years after she started posting. A year later, Goradia created an email template so she could contact companies herself. The template has landed her partnerships with fashion brands like JadeByMK, Aisha Rao, and The Little Black Bow.
She’s also done paid collaborations with global companies like Anita Dongre, Nikon, and Google Pixel, which all reached out to her.
Today, she charges a minimum of $1,000 for any piece of Instagram content, be it a story, reel, or post, with final rates dependent on the exact deliverables, timeline, and scale of the business she’s working with.
“My time is really limited, so I choose projects that really speak to me or if it’s a brand I really love,” she said. “I’m very fortunate to have the ability to pick and choose.”
She also said her six-figure salary and her partner’s income also help her pick brand deals more selectively.
Due to the demands of her banking career throughout the work week, Goradia bulk shoots most of her content on weekends and schedules posts to go live throughout the week or posts them during her breaks. Though she’s worked with brands on paid campaigns for a few years now, she said the joy of landing a campaign doesn’t go away.
“To this day, it still shocks me that brands want to pay me to model their clothes or promote their products,” she said.
Here’s the email template she uses to pitch brands:
Hi Team [X],
I’ve used [X] for over [Y] years now or I just came across [X] and [why I like the product / service]. I particularly love [add as many specifics as possible!].
My instagram [or other socials] audience is made up of [%] [demographics] of females [see if this is similar to the brand’s target demographic] and I’m sure would also love your products.
I’d love to talk further about how we can work together to share your products with my audience. I would be happy to share my engagement and additional details if you are interested. [link to social channels].
Look forward to hearing back from you soon!
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