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Tulsi, a small village in India’s Chhattisgarh state, has become known
as ‘YouTube Village” because a third of its population makes videos for
a living.
Online video content is more popular than ever, and it’s no wonder that
millions of people around the world are working hard trying to build
careers as video creators. But nowhere is the concentration of would-be
YouTubers than in Tulsi Village, a small rural settlement in
Chhattisgarh, where over a third of the 3,000-strong local population is
actively making videos and posting them on YouTube for profit. Many of
these creators used to be farmers, but after hearing that some of their
peers had doubled, even tripled their income making YouTube videos, they
decided that it was time for a career change.
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The story of India’s YouTube Village began with two friends, Gyanendra
Shukla and Jai Verma, who left their jobs as network engineer and
teacher, respectively, to make video content. Before long they started
earning a pretty penny from their new endeavor, and word of their
success spread throughout the village, inspiring others to follow in
their footsteps.
“I worked in SBI earlier, as a network engineer. My office had
high-speed internet and I used to watch YouTube videos there,” Shukla
told the ANI news agency. “I was already fond of movies. In 2011-12, a
new version of YouTube was launched. At that time, there were very few
channels on youtube. I was not satisfied with my 9 to 5 job. So I left
the job and started with YouTube.”
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Around 40 percent of the village population is now engaged in making
video content for platforms like YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, with the
youngest being 15 and the oldest being an 85-year-old grandmother. The
40 or so major channels based in Tulsi village range from comedy and
music to education and DIY, with the most popular numbering over 100,000
subscribers on YouTube alone.
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