How an Indian economics/geopolitics channel reached 3.5M subscribers in 3 years
Channel Stats
Channel name and link – Think School
Niche – Geopolitics, Economics, Education
Subscribers – ~2.5M
Videos published – 180
Starting date (of first video) – 29th July 2020
How did they get started?
Parsh Kothari and Ganeshprasad Sridharan met in 2006 in high school. Parsh was the school captain (a senior at the time) while Ganeshprasad was a junior who greatly looked up to Parsh. Parsh saw Ganesh as his little brother.
They had complementary skills. Parsh was an introvert who was great at business while Ganesh was an overwhelming extrovert who was great at public speaking.
Soon after graduating high school, they realized they stopped learning (or at least stopped enjoying it). So they rented a small apartment and started their own mini-school teaching others about communication skills, resume building, and other meta-skills.
They struggled to pay rent the entire time and during the exam period, they didn’t have a business at all.
Eventually, Ganesh read ‘Crush It’ by Gary Vaynerchuk where he learned the most sustainable businesses in the 21st Century need to be on the Internet.
Despite being too insecure to post online, they got started on Instagram. For about a year, they’d randomly post content on Instagram but that didn’t quite work out.
Eventually, they decided to start an educational YouTube channel, and shortly after, the channel was a huge hit and they never looked back.
How did they get to 10, 100, 1000, 10K, 100K, 1M subscribers, and ultimately where they are currently?
Initially, from late July 2020, Think School just re-uploaded videos they posted on their Instagram (which was the focal point of their efforts then) to YouTube. They weren’t consistent at all. But that all changed in March 2021.
The channel hit 100K subscribers on 24th April 2021 just 10 days after uploading a single video that went viral. Crucially though, it was the nine high-quality videos they uploaded before that ensured people subscribed for more.
People subscribe for your next video, not your current ones; so it was crucial to give viewers an indication of what they can expect by subscribing. This is difficult without an existing catalog of content.
One great video is enough to give you visibility. But the rest of your videos are what retain the audience.
Just 20 days after uploading that same video, Think School hit 200K subscribers. And their subscriber count increased by 100K each month after that.
Eventually, they hit 1M subscribers on February 2022, only 11 months after starting to consistently upload on their channel (and 19 months after starting their channel).