From Startups to Social Media: Ananya Donapati is Figuring it Out
Ananya Donapati (22) is known online for her impressive Japanese language abilities and in 2021, was even interviewed by the King of Japanese language learning content Dogen. Based in San Francisco, California with over 20,000 followers on Twitter and more than 40,000 followers on both TikTok and Instagram Donapati is representative of a new wave of internationally-minded Gen Z influencers who are bringing together different countries and cultures. Born in India but raised in the Bay Area, Donapati is carving a unique path for herself in both the US and Japan. While she’s known online for her Japanese, she’s also incredibly passionate and dedicated to business and graduated (early) from the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business last year in 2021 and wants to do something business-related between Japan and the US. Even with over tens of thousands of followers, for Donapati, content creation is a side job with her current full-time job being a marketing specialist at Amazon.
Speaking from a cafe in San Francisco, she says her draw to marketing was similar to her draw to content creation: creativity— a quality she says she’s possessed throughout her childhood. However, marketing hasn’t quite scratched that creative itch she thought it would. Despite that she still enjoys what she does and is reminded of its power through people she met through university and her work.
It also doesn’t stop her from trying new ways to learn and grow within her field; She hosts monthly gatherings for Japanese speakers in the Bay Area which mostly attract the attention of people in the startup space, people in venture capital, and engineers. She says the meaning behind this effort is to get the Japanese-Silicon Valley-business community together. “In many ways I feel dejected because all the people I look up to in the business world in Japan like come here [the US] and run away from that [Japan],” she says, “But I think what keeps me going is that … overall the economy is very strong and I realize they’ve [Japan] managed to keep their GDP high for so long and I think that speaks to the level of business quality they have and especially when I recently visited New York every company I would see like big towers you’d see a Japanese flag or a Japanese bank and that told me there’s a huge connection there.” But she clarifies, “But I’m by no means an expert.”
A photo from one the monthly gatherings that Donapati hosts
Those familiar with the US and Japan are fully aware of the differences in work culture between the two countries: the amount of time you’re in the office, Japanese company hierarchy, keigo, etc. But also as work cultures shift across the world, new trends and differences are popping up. Donapati has noticed that “In the US there’s girlboss, Gen Z. There’s a way of hustling like ‘My job needs to give me benefits and work-life balance but I’m also doing side jobs’ and that’s kind of the culture right now. That hustle culture is much more amplified in Silicon Valley where I feel everyone is working on something. It’s constant imposter syndrome. Whereas in Japan I wish there was more of a hustle culture, one of my friends is running a company [in Japan] and most of his friends are repeating a year because they couldn’t graduate while he’s killing it but it’s not something that’s spread across the generation. Here [in the US] it’s cool to be doing a lot of stuff.”
Donapati of course also picked up on the gender differences between the two work cultures: “I meet a lot of Japanese women who are around the age of 20, 21 and they were like ‘I wanna do this, I wanna do that,’ really cool stuff but they were kind of reluctant because of what other people might say. I just felt they have so much to offer.” In her experience networking on Japanese Twitter and says she’s only talked to maybe 1 or 2 women in that space. But while she knows the situation won’t change overnight, that the change is coming.
“My Japanese writing skills have improved since I started using Twitter 4 months ago. First, I analyzed other tweets and started writing my own while being conscious of the persuasive power and easy-to-understand way of conveying them. My Japanese is not that good yet, but the more I write, the more I notice my mistakes. The conclusion is that you can grow significantly by using SNS to learn languages.”
Like a good Berkeley graduate, the way she grew her online audience on social media was informed by data and consultations. To start a Twitter account in Japanese, she read Japanese resources on growing an account and began her online presence as a personality dedicated to Japanese audiences about startups, English language learning, her experiences with Japan, and life in the US. She learned the mechanics of how people view Twitter accounts and how they follow you and so she made a profile video introducing herself, learned about building a following, created alarms for posting 3 times a day to follow a Japanese work schedule, understood how the algorithm worked and it all paid off— she saw growth immediately. This newfound following spun off to TikTok and Instagram where she continued to expand. “I’m still sort of figuring it out,” she says., “I’m getting close to what I wanna create.” On TikTok, she has catered to the Japanese language learning community but it’s not where her passion lies. “I’ve been trying to 1. Ride the wave, I think it’s important to take advantage of that there’s probably a couple of months of high growth for people who are building their brands right now, and then 2. Trying to experiment, I haven’t put out enough content to see what works and I think it boils down to creating more.” For now, she uses TikTok for a mostly English-speaking audience, Twitter for Japanese audiences, and Instagram for both Japanese and English-speaking audiences.
Donapati has found her niche on TikTok, posting sketches about Japan and Japanese-language learning
Donapati says that in the US there’s simply more monetization opportunities in influencer/content creation. “And so I only use Twitter [for Japan] because I feel like it’s the only positively-viewed thing to use especially in business in Japan and I’ve been able to network a lot through that,” she says. “It’s been cool to do Instagram and Twitter to reach both Japanese and American audiences and I think people in Japan are warming up to content creation more.” She finds that for her Japanese audience, her content ends up being more educational while the American audience is more focused on entertainment. She finds that creators on TikTok and Instagram in Japan go on to be entertainers and become talent which isn’t her goal.
Social media is a means to an end for Donapati as she says, “What I think of social media is as a stepping stone into learning how businesses work […] and a part of me still [wants to have] a flexible job that allows me to do social media on the side so it requires me to pivot to always think of my target audience. Constantly thinking of how I want to scale anything I launch through social media has been really difficult and it’s teaching me about running something on my own, it’s a good stepping stone for me.”
Donapati gives her full admiration to successful content creators noting that they didn’t build their following overnight and all have something specific to them that they’re really good at: “That attention to detail gets overlooked [...] They spend a lot of time building their characters or their brand like there’s so much work to it and its elevated people’s careers and opportunities.”
For Donapati, Instagram is the only app where she caters to both Japanese and English-speaking audiences and posts lifestyle content of her life in San Francisco.
When asked if she has any long-term goals she admits, “Not really, I’m still trynna figure that out. I do still wanna do something in business related to the US and Japan.” She finds inspiration in companies like Notion, a project management and note-taking software that started in San Francisco, implemented Japan’s beauty into their product, and has gained popularity within Japan. More than anything she hopes whatever she creates has a good and beneficial impact. “For now,” she says, “I wanna build my content creation stuff and maybe that could lead to something bigger.”
Written by Leika Keys.
Leika Keys is a graduate student at International Christian University studying politics and international relations. She can be found roaming the Internet here.