In 2013, Swedish YouTuber
Felix Kjellberg aka PewDiePie
became the most-subscribed user on
YouTube ever.
Now, considering the channel was
just one dude and a webcam,
I'd say that's pretty impressive.
And even more so that he held on
to the title for as long as he did.
For years, it seemed like no one
would be able to catch up to him.
And then, in December 2015,
everything changed.
Mukesh Ambani decided that India's
internet landscape needed
a major level-up.
And so, he launched Reliance Jio.
He practically gave away free data for
anybody willing to be on his network.
It's actually pretty crazy how fast Jio
was and how dirt cheap the prices were.
And well, us being suckers for freebies,
gobbled it up.
Like a billionaire broadband Santa,
Ambani brought glee and 4G
to the lives of millions of people.
That's 100 million Indians, who were
experiencing high-speed internet
for the first time ever.
And, what did they use it for?
That's right.
We... I... I mean... We watched porn.
We used it for porn.
2017 actually saw a 1000% rise from
2016, for the search term
"Indian HD" on PornHub.
That's right. No more standard
definition bullshit.
We damn right want our
porn to be 1080p.
But how much porn can one watch?
The limit does not exist.
The limit does not exist.
Well yeah... But we did need to take
a break from time to time,
and so another site saw a huge boost 
from Jio's launch,
and that site was YouTube.
With the power of 4G behind them,
these new Indian netizens
were hungry for content.
But while this may have been new
online, their consumption habits
were literally, exactly the same as they
were offline.
Despite having an ocean of
entertainment at their fingertips,
it turned out all they literally wanted
was more Bollywood in their lives.
And who has the biggest library of
Bollywood content on the internet?
You guessed it.
It's the T-Series YouTube channel.
From music videos to trailers,
to well... entire films...
Not only that, but T-Series also has
various Tollywood and Kollywood playlists.
Yeah, T-Series has
everything on their page.
But in its first ten years from 2006-2016,
the channel only gained
14.4 million subscribers.
However, now owing to the surplus of new customers,
in just two years, its added more
than 50 million subscribers.
In fact, according to Social Blade,
T-Series gains an average of
150,000 subscribers per day.
And they're projected to have over 86
million subscribers within the next year.
Now, it should be said that literally
nothing has changed in their strategy.
But what has changed is now
they have a bridge to reach
that massive, massive audience.
And that was all made available
because of Jio's cheap internet.
Now, let's get back to PewDiePie.
As T-Series started getting more
and more subscribers,
he started getting
more and more annoyed
that this Indian channel is challenging
him for the title.
So, over the past few months, YouTube
has been this kind of weird battleground
where it's T-Series vs. PewDiePie, and
then T-Series fans vs. PewDiePie fans,
and it's all just bonkers.
I mean, people are
literally picking sides.
There are even live trackers
dedicated to just this feud.
You heard me right, I said trackers.
Like multiple trackers.
One dude actually bought billboards to
urge people to help PewDiePie retain his title.
So, I get it. PewDiePie has built this
army of followers over the years,
and I guess a lot of people don't want to
see a corporate entity
as the most subscribed YouTube
channel.
But here's the thing, PewDiePie is just
one dude making funny videos,
and sure, it's super impressive and
super commendable.
But T-Series boasts a roster of
massive, massive artists like
Honey Singh, Guru Randhawa,
A.R. Rahman, and many more.
They legit own the rights to some of
Bollywood's biggest hits of all time.
I mean, just look at these views,
it's like... what?
And to top it off, they upload new videos
exponentially faster than PewDiePie.
In fact, forget T-Series. Other
entertainment channels like SET India
are also adding subscribers at double the
rate that PewDiePie is.
At this rate, he's going to need a lot more
people putting up a lot more billboards.
See, right now there are diss tracks,
there are the aforementioned billboards,
and PewDiePie has also put up videos,
urging his fans to help him out,
which is kinda strange, but
whatever...
You're going up against a billion
Indians who are hungry for content.
Honestly, it's not much of a contest.
It's like asking Aditya from my
childhood gully cricket team
to bowl out Virat Kohli.
I guess Aditya was a decent enough
player and he was well liked,
but it's Virat Kohli!
It was a noble fight.
But as every Indian indie filmmaker has
come to realise over the years,
you just can't beat Bollywood masala.
Ever.
You just can't.
