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Youtube tops 2 billion views daily
MUMBAI: Five years old and already recording 2 billion video views a day. That‘s an awe-inspiring performance if there ever was. We are talking about YouTube which is celebrating its fifth anniversary today.
Its performance has made it the third most popular site in the world as on date, founded by three Paypal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. In fact, Karim posted the first video on Youtube.
The site attracted millions of dollars in venture capital funding before being bought over by Google in a $1.65 billion deal in 2007.
Hurley, however, would like YouTube to get past some hurdles. He told BBC that users spend just 15 minutes on the site while they spend five hours a day on TV.
It was hardly seven months ago that the company announced that it had crossed the billion video views milestone. Today almost 24 hours of video is uploaded to the site every minute.
The company has content deals with more than 10,000 partners, some of which are even large studios, who have set up their own Youtube channels.
YouTube says it has launched a special channel for users to upload their special You Tube moments. “Today, we‘re celebrating our birthday by launching a channel full of memorable moments, poignant user stories, celebrity curators and more. Let the videos below serve as an invitation for you to share *your* YouTube story with the world and you could appear on our commemorative channel,” says the post.
And the channel had already attracted in excess of 6,000 subscribers and more than 7,000 comments. Amongst the celebs who had chosen to curate their favourite YouTube videos included Conan ‘O‘ Brien.
From the Indian context, YouTube‘s rising use by fans to post free daily episodes of Indian television shows is worrisome. This happens almost minutes after each episode ends on TV and the best part is that it is clutter free – that is without any commercials.
Generating anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 views each (sometimes even higher), the availability of these episodes on YouTube means that those many domestic viewers are not watching the repeats on TV in case they have missed the first telecast.
Additionally, the views that YouTube is generating from free fan uploaded Indian TV shows could also be cannibalising pay TV revenues from viewers overseas. The site is attracting good traffic for Indian contnet globally and that is evident from the fact that the Indian Premier League cricket series telecast on YouTube got 55 million views – more in the US than in India.
The numbers for Indian TV soap episodes may appear small today for the Indian market, but with YouTube growing in leaps and bounds every day, these may rise exponentially suddenly as broadband spreads within the country. Deal making for channels and content creators with YouTube could then end up being a complicated exercise as TV and entertainment studios in the US learnt a couple of years ago.
YouTube, Indian broadcasters and producers need to think about this as the video site celebrates its fifth anniversary.
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Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
