Indian women make waves as YouTube Content Creators

While in 2015 there were no women YouTubers with over a million subscribers in India, the number has grown to 120 in 2019, say recent reports.

In all, India is home to over 1,200 YouTube channels which count over one million as subscriber base.

Satya Raghavan, director, Content Partnerships, YouTube in India, told agencies that while there were zero women creators with over one million subscribers in 2015, the number grew only slowly to just one woman creator with a million subscribers in 2016 and only three in 2017.

The number has “grown by leaps and bounds”, he added.

Raghavan said these women came from all parts of India, creating content in several Indian languages.

“YouTube is no longer an urban phenomenon, with about 60 percent of our watchtime coming from non-metro cities, creating content in multiple Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam, among others,” he said.

According to Raghavan, India has become YouTube’s biggest and fastest growing market globally with over 265 million monthly active users. “There is no better time than now to be a YouTube creator in India,” Raghavan said.

There are women celebrities like Bollywood actors Alia Bhatt, Jacqueline Fernandez, and sports journalist Snehal Pradhan joining the bandwagon on the platform.

There are also other women content creators on YouTube who have breached the glass ceiling and are bringing in diverse content, even from traditionally male dominated realms such as auto, technology, gaming and farming.

Among the notable women in India dominating YouTube is Prajakta Koli with over a subscriber base of four million. She creates humorous, relatable and socially conscious content.

Another name is Shruti Arjun Anand with over 5 million subscribers, and she creates beauty videos with her family members making cameo appearances.

Sonali Bhadauria, with nearly 2 million subscribers, shares videos of herself dancing to popular numbers and encouraging others to follow their passion for dance.

Kabita Singh, with 5.6 million subscribers, deals in cooking recipes and vlogs. Nisha Madhulika who commands a subscriber base of over seven million, has been sharing vegetarian recipes for over seven years now.