The story goes that when Chef Sanjay Thumma’s mother was pregnant with him, she opened the lid of the biriyani pot and felt her water break. “She was rushed to the hospital and 15 minutes after that, I was born. I was called the Biriyani Kid all through my childhood,” Thumma chuckles. Nobody knew at the time that his destiny would be linked with food. Today, the 54-year-old, also known as VahChef, is a renowned chef with 2.5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel Vahrehvah where he teaches his audience to create a variety of Indian dishes. His mammoth fan following extends to millions of Indian expatriate communities in mainland Europe, the US and other parts of the world.

A familiar face on television, having appeared on MasterChef India Hindi as a guest judge and now as a judge on MasterChef India Telugu on SonyLIV, Thumma emerged as the most-searched Indian chef, the third-most Googled chef in Asia and 15th worldwide in a survey by a US-based global adventure company, Explore Worldwide. They analysed 12 months of Google data and Thumma’s name appeared in 7,26,000 searches. Other chefs of Indian origin on the list include Kunal Kapur, Maneet Chauhan, Gaggan Anand and Madhur Jaffrey.

There are many celebrity chefs and Michelin-star chefs across the world, but Thumma’s popularity shows that one does not need those labels or awards to have a connection with the audience. Go through any of the videos the Hyderabad-based chef posts on his YouTube channel and you will get an idea of why they receive millions of views within a few hours of being posted. The smile on his face as he talks about food and the dish he is going to prepare, punctuated with one-liners and jokes, is something that endears him to his fans across the world.

“I get my humour from my father who is 84 years old. Even today when I visit him, there is constant laughter and fun,” he shares. For Thumma, it is important that he comes across as a friend to his viewers. At the end of each video, when he scoops up a morsel of the dish he has prepared and relishes it, it is his expression ‘boomba boomba’ that his followers wait for. “Earlier it was ‘dhinchik dhinchik’,” he laughs, adding, ‘boomba boomba’ is the ultimate happiness when you feel fully satisfied with the meal. “It was an instinctive expression I had when I went to MasterChef India Hindi as a guest judge,” he laughs.

Thumma was hardly eight years old when his mother was bedridden for a few weeks because of a medical issue. The young boy was entrusted with the responsibility of the kitchen. “I was a naughty kid. To keep me away from mischief, my mom would give me chores in the kitchen.

I would observe her cooking and when she fell sick, that observation was put to test,” he recalls. From learning to make rice to making dal, scrambled eggs, dosa and upma, Thumma did it all. Little wonder that later he chose to study Hotel Management and even opened his own restaurant in Chicago, before moving back to Hyderabad in 2008.

Chef Thumma’s future plans include inspiring his followers to grow their own food. He also wants to take his viewers back 5,000 years ago and share his research on how people back then would cook and eat.

“I want to do something I can continue for the next decade,” he says.