YouTube Opens Up India’s First Pop-up Space In Hyderabad For Video Content Creators

YouTube has launched its first ever pop-up space in Hyderabad to support the community of video content creators in India. The company confirmed the development via a recent tweet. It plans to conduct a total of 45 pop-up spaces in 21 markets this year, as shared in an ET report.

A term heard mainly in the retail space, pop-up space implies the temporary use of physical space to create a long-term, lasting impression with potential customers. The pop-space has been set up at Ramoji Film city from October 5-7.

The initiative has been built around the concept of “Learn,” “Connect” and “Create” model of permanent YouTube Spaces, which is a dedicated building for video content creators to produce their content. So far, YouTube spaces are available only in 10 locations worldwide including Mumbai. In the Mumbai YouTube space, since its launch in 2015, over 7500 creators have visited the Space and produced over 500 videos that have generated 100 Mn views.

“The pop-up format is an investment focused on the development and growth of content creators across the country. India has a dynamic content creator ecosystem and we are excited to bring the benefits of YouTube Space to creators in emerging creative talent hubs like Hyderabad through a pop up format which is the first-ever in the country,” said Lance Podell, Global head of YouTube Spaces to ET.

A snapshot from Mumbai YouTube Space located at the Whistling Woods campus

How Video Content Creators Can Leverage YouTube Pop-up Space In Hyderabad

As shared by Lance, over the next three days, 700 creators will get an opportunity to advance their digital and business skills. The participants will get classes on video production, and building an online business. At the same time, they will also get an opportunity to network with established and popular YouTube creators in India.

The global video sharing platform has a very broad positioning in India and has been a platform adopted by many homepreneurs to showcase their talent as well as earn revenues at the same time.

While the company has 1.5 Bn logged in users every month around the world and 1 Bn watched hours every day, in India, it has 180 Mn people watching videos on mobile alone every month.  As claimed by the company in a media statement, in the last 10-12 months over 50 independent creators in India have hit the milestone of one million subscribers and thousands of creators have hit 100K subscribers mark.

Recently, in September 2017, it also claimed that its regional content viewership  has been tripled over the past two years. As said, the top 10 regional YouTube channels in India have subscriber bases ranging from 300K to over 800K.

According to David Macdonald, Head of YouTube Spaces Asia Pacific, the amount of content uploaded to YouTube in India has grown by 95%. “India is a very strong market for us worldwide and among the top 10 markets in terms of user engagement and watch-time. Right now our mobile watch-time growth in India is 400% year-on-year and 85% watch-time (viewership) comes from mobile devices,” he added.

From national to regional, YouTube is growing its roots deep into the Indian market, positioning itself as the first choice for the video content creators to showcase their ideas and work. The idea of pop-up space will certainly help the company in getting more content creators onboard and also introducing quality content, eventually increasing the platform viewership in the country.  Also, we cannot deny the possibility that after setting up YouTube permanent space in Mumbai, Hyderabad Pop-up space might be an investment to test the waters in the city for the next YouTube space in the country.

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