ISLAMABAD: More than 55 per cent of the viewership of Pakistani YouTube channels comes from outside the country, indicating that content created by local YouTubers is highly popular all across the globe, Google’s Country Director for Pakistan Farhan Qureshi said on Wednesday.

“More than 300 Pakistani channels on YouTube have more than one million subscribers, showing an overall growth of 35pc against the previous year,” Mr Qureshi said during a virtual roundtable attended by the creators of four popular accounts — ‘Ducky Bhai’, ‘Something Haute’, ‘Sistrology’ and ‘Street Food PK’.

Besides, more than 4,500 YouTube channels had more than 100,000 subscribers, registering a growth rate of 45pc, he said.

YouTube is one of the most popular video platforms in Pakistan and the world over. The country has seen a jump in the number of content creators and their subscribers over the past few years.

Mr Qureshi said popular Pakistani YouTube channels were now making over Rs1 million annually, recording a growth rate of more than 140pc year-on-year.

He said YouTube encouraged its content creators to grow financially stable. During the panel discussion, the content creators also shared the stories of their YouTube journey as to how they started it off, how they managed to build a community, how YouTube changed their life and where they stand today.

At the roundtable, the content creators shared their experiences about their YouTube journey.

Saad Ur Rehman, popularly known as ‘Ducky Bhai’, recalled that he started his YouTube channel five years ago.

“I used to make gaming and tech-related tutorial videos, used to ask shopkeepers and friends to lend me their gadgets so I could record videos on them,” he said. “I learnt to edit, created ‘Ducky Bhai’ and things changed. It grew to podcasts, vlogs and ‘Ducky Extra’.”

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2022