Photo: The Quint
Sejal Kumar's YouTube channel didn't start as a music project. It started with budget-shopping videos. "My channel purely started with fashion, styling, budget shopping videos, going to different street markets and doing shopping challenges," she's said of the early years — content she built while studying economics at Delhi University, editing and uploading it all herself. By 2020, that channel had crossed a million subscribers on the strength of roughly 600 videos and four years of consistent weekly uploads.
Music entered almost by accident. In 2020, she was selected for YouTube's Creators for Change program, a girls'-education initiative run with the Obama Foundation, and wrote an original song for it called "Aisi Hun." It reportedly hit a million views in its first week. Five years later, after an album, an EP, and — by her own account — a period where she seriously considered quitting music entirely, she was named to Rolling Stone India's Future 25.
This is the story of a content creator who became a musician without ever fully leaving the content creator behind — and who's been unusually honest about how close she came to stopping.
Key takeaways
- Sejal Kumar built her YouTube channel from fashion, styling, and budget-shopping content while studying economics at Delhi University, crossing 1 million subscribers by 2020 on the strength of roughly 600 videos
- Her original song "Aisi Hun," written for the 2020 YouTube Creators for Change campaign with the Obama Foundation, reportedly reached 1 million views within its first week
- She released her debut album "shy" (7 tracks) in 2022, and an EP, "Finding Joy," in February 2025
- She's said directly: "I wanted to quit music entirely before I released that EP" — a rare degree of honesty about the gap between public output and private struggle
- She was named to Rolling Stone India's Future 25 in April 2025, and released the single "Mai Aur Tum" in June 2025
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The Starting Point: A Fashion Channel Built Between Economics Classes
Sejal Kumar began building her YouTube presence while studying economics at Delhi University, discovering vlogging around the mid-2010s and shaping her earliest content entirely around fashion — budget shopping hauls, street-market videos, styling advice. She did the editing, uploading, and promotion herself, with no team behind her. By 2020, that solo effort had produced roughly 600 videos across four years of weekly uploads and crossed a million subscribers — a genuinely significant creator milestone in the Indian YouTube landscape of that era.
Photo: YourStory
That channel — built on fashion and lifestyle content, not music — is the actual foundation her music career sits on. Her audience didn't discover her as a musician first; they discovered her as a creator, which shaped both the size and the nature of the audience that eventually heard her sing.
The Accidental Pivot: "Aisi Hun" and the Obama Foundation
In 2020, Sejal Kumar was selected for YouTube's Creators for Change program, a global initiative that partnered with the Obama Foundation around girls' education. As part of that campaign, she wrote and released her first original song, "Aisi Hun" — not a pre-planned music career move, but a direct product of the campaign's brief. It reportedly crossed a million views within its first week of release, a number that, whatever the platform-driven boost behind it, put her voice in front of an audience well beyond her existing subscriber base.
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Building a Discography: "shy" and the Years Between
Sejal Kumar released her debut album, "shy," in 2022 — seven tracks that extended "Aisi Hun" into a fuller body of work rather than treating it as a one-off. What happened between that album and her next release is where her account of her own career gets notably candid.
Sejal Kumar, on the period before her 2025 EP: "I wanted to quit music entirely before I released that EP." (Rolling Stone India, April 2025)
She hasn't detailed the specifics publicly, but the admission itself is unusual in an industry where artists — especially ones with large public platforms — rarely acknowledge seriously considering stopping. It reframes "Finding Joy," the EP that eventually followed, as a genuine act of persistence rather than a routine release.
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Finding Joy: An EP Named for the Struggle Behind It
Released on February 14, 2025, "Finding Joy" is structured as a deliberate emotional arc — opening with "Yakeen," a ballad about lost self-belief, and closing with "Ishaare," about reclaiming fearlessness. Given her own account of nearly quitting before its release, the EP's structure reads less like a marketing concept and more like a documented recovery.
The EP's release preceded her inclusion in Rolling Stone India's Future 25 list in April 2025, where she was recognized alongside artists working across far more conventional music-first career paths — a notable inclusion for someone whose primary public identity, for most of the preceding decade, was as a content creator rather than a musician.
2025 and What's Followed: "Mai Aur Tum" and Beyond
In June 2025, Sejal Kumar released the single "Mai Aur Tum," which she's described as being about starting a new journey with someone. She marked the release with an "Inner Circle" event in Delhi — an unplugged, acoustic gig format that included covers and audience karaoke, closer in spirit to a fan meetup than a conventional concert. Around the same period, she's also been developing a content studio and short-form format under her own banner, continuing to build in the content-creation space alongside her music.
A note on scope: the most recent verifiable, dated activity found for this piece runs through July 2025. Nothing independently confirmed beyond that point should be read into her current status — her pace of releases and public updates has historically been gradual rather than constant.
What Other Creators Can Take From Sejal Kumar's Approach
An existing audience is a real asset for a creative pivot — but it's not the whole audience you'll need. Her YouTube base gave "Aisi Hun" a launchpad most independent musicians don't have, but she's still had to build a music-specific identity on top of it.
A pivot doesn't require abandoning the platform that built you. Sejal Kumar's move into music happened alongside her continued content work, not instead of it — a multi-hyphenate approach that spreads both risk and opportunity across formats.
Publicly admitting a low point can deepen rather than damage an audience's trust. Her statement about nearly quitting music before "Finding Joy" is a rare level of honesty that reframes an EP release as something more consequential than a routine drop.
A structured project can carry an emotional arc a single release can't. "Finding Joy"'s deliberate opening-to-closing arc — from lost self-belief to reclaimed fearlessness — shows how a short EP can function as a documented turning point rather than just a track list.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Sejal Kumar?
Sejal Kumar is an Indian content creator and musician who built a YouTube channel of roughly 1.47 million subscribers starting with fashion and lifestyle content in the mid-2010s. She moved into music in 2020 with the original song "Aisi Hun," has since released the album "shy" (2022) and the EP "Finding Joy" (2025), and was named to Rolling Stone India's Future 25 in 2025.
What is "Aisi Hun" about?
"Aisi Hun" is Sejal Kumar's debut original song, written for YouTube's 2020 Creators for Change campaign in partnership with the Obama Foundation, focused on girls' education. It reportedly reached 1 million views within its first week of release.
Did Sejal Kumar consider quitting music?
Yes. She's said directly, "I wanted to quit music entirely before I released that EP," referring to the period before her 2025 EP "Finding Joy." She hasn't detailed the specifics publicly, but the admission is unusually candid for an artist with a large public platform.
What is Sejal Kumar's musical style?
She makes dreamy pop centered on mellow synths, acoustic textures, and playful rhythms, paired with introspective, journal-like lyrics. She's cited Troye Sivan and Conan Gray as influences.
Is Sejal Kumar still primarily a YouTuber or a musician now?
Both. She has continued building content-creation projects, including a short-form format and content studio, alongside her music releases. Her career doesn't read as a full pivot away from content creation — it's an expansion into music built on top of it.
Sejal Kumar's path into music doesn't follow the usual script of an artist chasing a breakout. It's the story of a creator whose platform gave her a shot at music almost by circumstance, who built a real discography from that shot, and who's been unusually candid that the path there included seriously considering walking away. That honesty, as much as the songs themselves, is what makes her inclusion among India's Future 25 worth paying attention to.
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