Humans of Bombay founder Karishma Mehta.
Credit: X/@Karishma_Mehta5
Humans of Bombay, a storytelling platform where stories of people are posted and showcased to the world, recently came into the news due to a statement made by its founder Karishma Mehta.
The controversy started with Humans of Bombay filing a copyright infringement case against People of India (POI) alleging that POI had copied their content. They claimed that People of India used videos from their YouTube channel and Instagram account without authorisation, infringing copyright.
To this, Brandon Stanton, creator of Humans of New York (HONY) tweeted a post saying that Humans of Bombay actually got inspired by HONY without following any legal steps and pointed out that it is wrong to sue POI.
Now an old video of Karishma Mehta has surfaced online, where she can be seen talking about how she started Humans of Bombay.
In the video she claimed that the idea of starting Humans of Bombay came "out of the blue" and it just clicked her.
"Completely randomly and out of the blue, I stumbled upon the idea of Humans of Bombay and I started it. And it clicked. That period was a high of its own to start something new," she said.
Mehta also talked about her early "struggles", revealing how the organistation had trouble making money during its first three years. She also acknowledged that she was on the support of the pocket money that she got from her parents.
However, the old video posted online got a flurry of comments, where many users slammed her for making the comment, while others trolled her statement and pointed out the "struggle" part of it.
One user commented, "The Categorical Influencer. Unoriginal. Petty and never give credits to those who deserve. And yes, they have immense struggle."
"And the concept and the name turned out to be an exact replica of Humans of New York…damn! What a delicious coincidence," wrote another user.
"And they also sued people out of the blue," wrote a third.