Deepanshi Jain, a young woman in her early 20s, has a YouTube channel that has amassed over 100,000 subscribers. It started with the Covid-19 lockdown, when she found herself wondering what to do with the time that hung heavy on her hands.
Figuring that there could be others battling the same dilemma, Jain started a YouTube channel with a simple theme: What do you do – what can you do – when you are stuck at home?
The content gained immediate traction. “My channel was monetised within two months,” Jain says. “My videos went viral during Covid. Within two months, I got 6,000 subscribers.” She quit her job and devoted all her time to content creation.
Jain exemplifies a study, published in 2022, by Oxford Economics which found that the ever-growing numbers of creative entrepreneurs on YouTube contributed over Rs 10,000 crore to India’s Gross Domestic Product in 2021. The study, fielded in eight Indian languages, also found that the platform supported an equivalent of 750,000 full-time jobs.
The study shows that unlike the much-talked-about internet-based startups that originate in the metros and big cities, content creators are emerging from every nook and corner of the country.
