The 20-year-old Tapping Into India’s Billion-Dollar Creator Economy
How he’s gone from freelance video editing to running a full-suite content production house
Divye Agarwal, the India-based founder and CEO of BingeLabs, was 14 years old when he started freelance video editing. Now 20, Divye runs an influencer content production house with a team of 20 people, all remote, that generates an annual recurring revenue of $200,000.
The business doesn’t have a digital footprint, “because we sell ourselves through our personal brand,” he says. His company helps creators end to end, from thinking of content topics to editing the primarily YouTube videos. “All they have to do is shoot,” Divye says. “The rest‚ the designing part, titles, the optimization of videos—that all is done by us.”
We caught up with Divye to talk about the huge creator market in India, and how he is able to run such a tight ship working with people around the world. Here’s our conversation, which has been edited for clarity.
Anjie: What’s the creator economy like in India?
Divye: The creator economy in India is booming right now. It started during COVID when a lot of people had time and got into content creation. The creator economy size for the Indian market is several billions of dollars.
The most-used platforms in India are Instagram and YouTube. People are slowly switching over to LinkedIn and Twitter as well. Facebook used to be the main platform, but it’s not what it used to be five or seven years ago.
Anjie: Who do you work with?
Divye: We help business coaches, founders, and edu-tainment and info-tainment channels. In India, we help creators scale mainly on YouTube. And we’ve worked with unicorn brands like Classplus. In the West, we mainly help YouTubers like Max Herta, Justin Moore, and Matt Koval. The creators just have to shoot the videos, and we take care of all the other parts like ideation, scripting, editing, SEO, and posting the video.
Anjie: What’s the process when you work with an influencer?
Divye: Whenever we talk with an influencer, we first try to understand them by asking several questions: What's your vision for the YouTube channel? Where do you want to position yourself? And what are the things you have done that you are comfortable showing, that you're not comfortable showing? This process is called creative profiling. Once we do that, we go back to the team and think of ideas for what we could do with the channel.
Anjie: What does that brainstorm process look like for your team?
Divye: Based on our conversation with the creator, our team researches ideal content pieces and how it has been done by other people and whether or not it performed. We look at what other creators of the same niche are doing, and ask how we can replicate them by not replicating them. In other words, we want to replicate the idea behind it and do it in our own way. Because to be honest, content is not new anywhere—it's just been repurposed, and there's a way of repurposing it every time. So we just try to see what's working and how that could fit this particular creator. We discuss it as a team, and talk about how we can implement it into our channel.
Anjie: How do you work with creators once you have these ideas set?
Divye: Once we have a call with the influencer, we take one to two weeks to get back to them with the initial idea and execution process. We’ll give the creator the strategy and the storyboard for the topics we’ve come up with, the scripts, and instructions on how to shoot it.
Once they shoot the video, which takes them three to four days, they give us the raw files, and we post-produce the video, which takes four or five days. We’ll send it back to the creator, they review it and ask for any changes. When they’re happy with the video, we’ll upload it to YouTube with the right set of titles and a thumbnail.
Anjie: What has helped you figure out what works and what doesn’t?
Divye: We experiment. Then we look at, say, in the last three months, let's say four or five have worked out of 16 or 20 topics and the rest all have failed. We just doubled the things that have worked and stopped doing things that have failed. And this goes on for years. YouTube is all about experimenting.
In terms of data, we collect it from YouTube—24 hours, a week, and a month after the video goes live—and analyze it on a spreadsheet. We measure how much the audience has risen, the retention rate, and engagement compared to the other videos we have done. We discuss what topics are bringing the best out of a creator and what topics are not working for a creator—because every person is different.
Anjie: What’s your advice for any creator you work with?
Divye: Do not fake it, because then people won’t be able to relate. When you're natural and raw, it's more of a human coming through.
Let's say Ashok Ramachandra—if you go to his channel, you wouldn’t see much in terms of views (it’s a thousand or so). But what you would see is his authentic self on topics that have been talked about lately. Because his vision for his channel was: I don’t care if the views come or not. So we positioned him as someone like Brian Tracy [a motivational speaker] in India.
Anjie: What's your process internally with your team?
Divye: We have biweekly meetings [internally] and weekly meetings with the influencer. We collaborate on Slack and mostly on WhatsApp, because that’s where they’re most comfortable. We use spreadsheets to track all our work and all the work in progress and all the ideas. It includes ideation, it includes the script writing, it includes summary designing, and includes post-production parts.
We have different account managers managing each influencer; the team manages more than 20. About 10 of the influencers are managed personally by me and my co-founder.
The team right now has more than eight video editors, more than three designers, five script writers, two strategists, and a few account managers.
Anjie: How do you manage your team?
Divye: Whenever we hire, we look for someone who does not need a lot of instruction. That makes it easier for me to manage people. We give a potential hire a test task—for example, a video to edit, with instructions. We let them come with the creativity and if it's aligned with ours, we offer them a one-month internship to see how they perform.
On the team, we all have expectations and deadlines aligned and everybody knows what to do. Whenever I see something is not being done, I just ask the specific member what's going on.
Anjie: How do you manage your workflow?
Divye: Internally, we use Notion, where everyone is mentioned and the work is updated on a daily basis. There are columns for the task, the deadlines, the work that has been done so far. Everything—like raw files, the video of files, instructions—is in Notion.
We create separate Google Docs for all the information related to a creator: Whatever the vision of the client is, how we have to make a video and any follow-ups needed.
Anjie: What’s your general philosophy on collaboration?
Divye: It’s important to respect people's boundaries—for example, if the influencer doesn't want to be disturbed on weekends or some specific days—and what they do and don't want to do. You both must be aligned on expectations and vision.
The creator economy is a very lucrative space as of now. I think for people looking to join it, it could be a very fun journey.
The 20-year-old Tapping Into India’s Billion-Dollar Creator Economy
How he’s gone from freelance video editing to running a full-suite content production house
Divye Agarwal, the India-based founder and CEO of BingeLabs, was 14 years old when he started freelance video editing. Now 20, Divye runs an influencer content production house with a team of 20 people, all remote, that generates an annual recurring revenue of $200,000.
The business doesn’t have a digital footprint, “because we sell ourselves through our personal brand,” he says. His company helps creators end to end, from thinking of content topics to editing the primarily YouTube videos. “All they have to do is shoot,” Divye says. “The rest‚ the designing part, titles, the optimization of videos—that all is done by us.”
We caught up with Divye to talk about the huge creator market in India, and how he is able to run such a tight ship working with people around the world. Here’s our conversation, which has been edited for clarity.
Anjie: What’s the creator economy like in India?
Divye: The creator economy in India is booming right now. It started during COVID when a lot of people had time and got into content creation. The creator economy size for the Indian market is several billions of dollars.
The most-used platforms in India are Instagram and YouTube. People are slowly switching over to LinkedIn and Twitter as well. Facebook used to be the main platform, but it’s not what it used to be five or seven years ago.
Anjie: Who do you work with?
Divye: We help business coaches, founders, and edu-tainment and info-tainment channels. In India, we help creators scale mainly on YouTube. And we’ve worked with unicorn brands like Classplus. In the West, we mainly help YouTubers like Max Herta, Justin Moore, and Matt Koval. The creators just have to shoot the videos, and we take care of all the other parts like ideation, scripting, editing, SEO, and posting the video.
Anjie: What’s the process when you work with an influencer?
Divye: Whenever we talk with an influencer, we first try to understand them by asking several questions: What's your vision for the YouTube channel? Where do you want to position yourself? And what are the things you have done that you are comfortable showing, that you're not comfortable showing? This process is called creative profiling. Once we do that, we go back to the team and think of ideas for what we could do with the channel.
Anjie: What does that brainstorm process look like for your team?
Divye: Based on our conversation with the creator, our team researches ideal content pieces and how it has been done by other people and whether or not it performed. We look at what other creators of the same niche are doing, and ask how we can replicate them by not replicating them. In other words, we want to replicate the idea behind it and do it in our own way. Because to be honest, content is not new anywhere—it's just been repurposed, and there's a way of repurposing it every time. So we just try to see what's working and how that could fit this particular creator. We discuss it as a team, and talk about how we can implement it into our channel.
Anjie: How do you work with creators once you have these ideas set?
Divye: Once we have a call with the influencer, we take one to two weeks to get back to them with the initial idea and execution process. We’ll give the creator the strategy and the storyboard for the topics we’ve come up with, the scripts, and instructions on how to shoot it.
Once they shoot the video, which takes them three to four days, they give us the raw files, and we post-produce the video, which takes four or five days. We’ll send it back to the creator, they review it and ask for any changes. When they’re happy with the video, we’ll upload it to YouTube with the right set of titles and a thumbnail.
Anjie: What has helped you figure out what works and what doesn’t?
Divye: We experiment. Then we look at, say, in the last three months, let's say four or five have worked out of 16 or 20 topics and the rest all have failed. We just doubled the things that have worked and stopped doing things that have failed. And this goes on for years. YouTube is all about experimenting.
In terms of data, we collect it from YouTube—24 hours, a week, and a month after the video goes live—and analyze it on a spreadsheet. We measure how much the audience has risen, the retention rate, and engagement compared to the other videos we have done. We discuss what topics are bringing the best out of a creator and what topics are not working for a creator—because every person is different.
Anjie: What’s your advice for any creator you work with?
Divye: Do not fake it, because then people won’t be able to relate. When you're natural and raw, it's more of a human coming through.
Let's say Ashok Ramachandra—if you go to his channel, you wouldn’t see much in terms of views (it’s a thousand or so). But what you would see is his authentic self on topics that have been talked about lately. Because his vision for his channel was: I don’t care if the views come or not. So we positioned him as someone like Brian Tracy [a motivational speaker] in India.
Anjie: What's your process internally with your team?
Divye: We have biweekly meetings [internally] and weekly meetings with the influencer. We collaborate on Slack and mostly on WhatsApp, because that’s where they’re most comfortable. We use spreadsheets to track all our work and all the work in progress and all the ideas. It includes ideation, it includes the script writing, it includes summary designing, and includes post-production parts.
We have different account managers managing each influencer; the team manages more than 20. About 10 of the influencers are managed personally by me and my co-founder.
The team right now has more than eight video editors, more than three designers, five script writers, two strategists, and a few account managers.
Anjie: How do you manage your team?
Divye: Whenever we hire, we look for someone who does not need a lot of instruction. That makes it easier for me to manage people. We give a potential hire a test task—for example, a video to edit, with instructions. We let them come with the creativity and if it's aligned with ours, we offer them a one-month internship to see how they perform.
On the team, we all have expectations and deadlines aligned and everybody knows what to do. Whenever I see something is not being done, I just ask the specific member what's going on.
Anjie: How do you manage your workflow?
Divye: Internally, we use Notion, where everyone is mentioned and the work is updated on a daily basis. There are columns for the task, the deadlines, the work that has been done so far. Everything—like raw files, the video of files, instructions—is in Notion.
We create separate Google Docs for all the information related to a creator: Whatever the vision of the client is, how we have to make a video and any follow-ups needed.
Anjie: What’s your general philosophy on collaboration?
Divye: It’s important to respect people's boundaries—for example, if the influencer doesn't want to be disturbed on weekends or some specific days—and what they do and don't want to do. You both must be aligned on expectations and vision.
The creator economy is a very lucrative space as of now. I think for people looking to join it, it could be a very fun journey.
The 20-year-old Tapping Into India’s Billion-Dollar Creator Economy
How he’s gone from freelance video editing to running a full-suite content production house
Divye Agarwal, the India-based founder and CEO of BingeLabs, was 14 years old when he started freelance video editing. Now 20, Divye runs an influencer content production house with a team of 20 people, all remote, that generates an annual recurring revenue of $200,000.
The business doesn’t have a digital footprint, “because we sell ourselves through our personal brand,” he says. His company helps creators end to end, from thinking of content topics to editing the primarily YouTube videos. “All they have to do is shoot,” Divye says. “The rest‚ the designing part, titles, the optimization of videos—that all is done by us.”
We caught up with Divye to talk about the huge creator market in India, and how he is able to run such a tight ship working with people around the world. Here’s our conversation, which has been edited for clarity.
Anjie: What’s the creator economy like in India?
Divye: The creator economy in India is booming right now. It started during COVID when a lot of people had time and got into content creation. The creator economy size for the Indian market is several billions of dollars.
The most-used platforms in India are Instagram and YouTube. People are slowly switching over to LinkedIn and Twitter as well. Facebook used to be the main platform, but it’s not what it used to be five or seven years ago.
Anjie: Who do you work with?
Divye: We help business coaches, founders, and edu-tainment and info-tainment channels. In India, we help creators scale mainly on YouTube. And we’ve worked with unicorn brands like Classplus. In the West, we mainly help YouTubers like Max Herta, Justin Moore, and Matt Koval. The creators just have to shoot the videos, and we take care of all the other parts like ideation, scripting, editing, SEO, and posting the video.
Anjie: What’s the process when you work with an influencer?
Divye: Whenever we talk with an influencer, we first try to understand them by asking several questions: What's your vision for the YouTube channel? Where do you want to position yourself? And what are the things you have done that you are comfortable showing, that you're not comfortable showing? This process is called creative profiling. Once we do that, we go back to the team and think of ideas for what we could do with the channel.
Anjie: What does that brainstorm process look like for your team?
Divye: Based on our conversation with the creator, our team researches ideal content pieces and how it has been done by other people and whether or not it performed. We look at what other creators of the same niche are doing, and ask how we can replicate them by not replicating them. In other words, we want to replicate the idea behind it and do it in our own way. Because to be honest, content is not new anywhere—it's just been repurposed, and there's a way of repurposing it every time. So we just try to see what's working and how that could fit this particular creator. We discuss it as a team, and talk about how we can implement it into our channel.
Anjie: How do you work with creators once you have these ideas set?
Divye: Once we have a call with the influencer, we take one to two weeks to get back to them with the initial idea and execution process. We’ll give the creator the strategy and the storyboard for the topics we’ve come up with, the scripts, and instructions on how to shoot it.
Once they shoot the video, which takes them three to four days, they give us the raw files, and we post-produce the video, which takes four or five days. We’ll send it back to the creator, they review it and ask for any changes. When they’re happy with the video, we’ll upload it to YouTube with the right set of titles and a thumbnail.
Anjie: What has helped you figure out what works and what doesn’t?
Divye: We experiment. Then we look at, say, in the last three months, let's say four or five have worked out of 16 or 20 topics and the rest all have failed. We just doubled the things that have worked and stopped doing things that have failed. And this goes on for years. YouTube is all about experimenting.
In terms of data, we collect it from YouTube—24 hours, a week, and a month after the video goes live—and analyze it on a spreadsheet. We measure how much the audience has risen, the retention rate, and engagement compared to the other videos we have done. We discuss what topics are bringing the best out of a creator and what topics are not working for a creator—because every person is different.
Anjie: What’s your advice for any creator you work with?
Divye: Do not fake it, because then people won’t be able to relate. When you're natural and raw, it's more of a human coming through.
Let's say Ashok Ramachandra—if you go to his channel, you wouldn’t see much in terms of views (it’s a thousand or so). But what you would see is his authentic self on topics that have been talked about lately. Because his vision for his channel was: I don’t care if the views come or not. So we positioned him as someone like Brian Tracy [a motivational speaker] in India.
Anjie: What's your process internally with your team?
Divye: We have biweekly meetings [internally] and weekly meetings with the influencer. We collaborate on Slack and mostly on WhatsApp, because that’s where they’re most comfortable. We use spreadsheets to track all our work and all the work in progress and all the ideas. It includes ideation, it includes the script writing, it includes summary designing, and includes post-production parts.
We have different account managers managing each influencer; the team manages more than 20. About 10 of the influencers are managed personally by me and my co-founder.
The team right now has more than eight video editors, more than three designers, five script writers, two strategists, and a few account managers.
Anjie: How do you manage your team?
Divye: Whenever we hire, we look for someone who does not need a lot of instruction. That makes it easier for me to manage people. We give a potential hire a test task—for example, a video to edit, with instructions. We let them come with the creativity and if it's aligned with ours, we offer them a one-month internship to see how they perform.
On the team, we all have expectations and deadlines aligned and everybody knows what to do. Whenever I see something is not being done, I just ask the specific member what's going on.
Anjie: How do you manage your workflow?
Divye: Internally, we use Notion, where everyone is mentioned and the work is updated on a daily basis. There are columns for the task, the deadlines, the work that has been done so far. Everything—like raw files, the video of files, instructions—is in Notion.
We create separate Google Docs for all the information related to a creator: Whatever the vision of the client is, how we have to make a video and any follow-ups needed.
Anjie: What’s your general philosophy on collaboration?
Divye: It’s important to respect people's boundaries—for example, if the influencer doesn't want to be disturbed on weekends or some specific days—and what they do and don't want to do. You both must be aligned on expectations and vision.
The creator economy is a very lucrative space as of now. I think for people looking to join it, it could be a very fun journey.
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Subscribe to our weekly newsletter so you never miss a story.
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