Madan Gowri, who is demystifying Issues that resonate with the youth , was recently recognised for his influence in educational content creation by NewsX on its special series NewsX Influencer A-List. In an exclusive conversation with NewsX, Madan spoke about Tamil YouTube space, competition, his channel’s focus on news commentary and much more. Read excerpts:
Talking about the Tamil YouTube space, Madan said, “I think it is a great place to bein because the competition is very healthy. At the same time, the internet penetration in Tamil Nadu is good as compared to other states. I can see the numbers there. I have seen creators who speak Hindi and have subscribers up to 20 million. That’s the number in Hindi. Tamil Nadu is one state where one language is spoken to one group. I have 5 million subscribers now and I know Tamil channels that have more than 10 million subscribers. It is interesting for me to look at these numbers coming from Tamil Nadu, as compared to Hindi. Tamil, being a very interesting language, the internet connectivity is crazy.”
When asked if considers Tamil is a disadvantage for his channel or is it a thought that never crosses your mind, he said, “I think it is both. I have my advantages and I have my disadvantages. No matter how good content someone creates in Hindi, it would not penetrate into Tamil. At the same time, I cannot cross that space. I think it is similar to Bollywood and Hollywood. No matter how great the movie is, unless you dub it and push it, it may not be a huge thing in Tamil Nadu. Even a Tamil movie made here, dubbed in Hindi and pushed there, may not be hit. The market is like that. It is good that both exist. If probably I was a Punjabi or a Marathi or a Bengali, I don’t think I would have these many subscribers. It has its own advantages and disadvantages.”
Speaking about competition in the YouTube space, he said, “I think a competition is always healthy. No matter how many subscribers one has, there are not actually competing with you. Those videos are probably 10 minutes in length and people have 24 hours in a day. It is free of cost. Movies having competition makes sense because movies have tickets worth Rs 150 and that leads to competition. That kind of competition does not exist on YouTube.”
Revealing how much time did it take to grow and monetize the channel, Madan said, “I started monetizing my channel after 100 videos, that would be about 4 months. I never really wanted to be a youtuber as such because when I started making videos on YouTube, there was nothing as called a youtuber. People were just uploading on YouTube. That’s it. Eventually, I understood that you can make money out of it and make a living out of it. It took me another 3 years to reach there.”
Commenting on his channel’s focus on news commentary, Madan further said, “Since I post videos everything, I started noticing that people looked at me as a friend rather than a creator. Just like you smile at a person who crosses your house everyday, similarly they see my face everyday. I talked to them everyday. When Covid happened last year in 2020, I wasn’t giving commentary on news before that, but then there was something happening everyday. The whole country shut down and you couldn’t go out. These were burning issues so when I started making these videos, people actually started connecting with me more. That’s when I realised why not. “
