Catching Up With YouTube India Head Ishan Chatterjee | NDTV Profit
YouTube India's MD Ishan Chatterjee talks about the platform’s journey in the country, its commitment to enhancing safety and shares his message to Indian youth.
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Transcript
00:00 We are here at Hyderabad Public School, 100 years celebration and who better to speak
00:04 to than Ishan Chatterjee who is the MD, Managing Director of YouTube India.
00:09 Welcome back to your school, 100 years celebration and you have come here to give Gyan to the
00:13 youngsters and of course have fun as well.
00:16 Absolutely, thank you very much Uma for having it.
00:18 It's such a great time to be back in school and as you said it feels odd to be the one
00:22 giving Gyan, having got Gyan here for so many years but it's just fantastic.
00:26 Okay, YouTube also celebrated 15 years this year.
00:30 So you know when you are coming back here at this time, there are so many youngsters
00:36 among your students and otherwise in the world outside who are all looking to YouTube as
00:40 that opportunity to become famous.
00:43 You could have come from nowhere and yet you make your space in the world.
00:47 Yeah, I think you said it better than I could have said it.
00:52 YouTube as a platform, we are celebrating 15 years in India and one of the things we
00:55 are very proud about is how we've democratized access to content creation.
01:00 As we talked on the panel just now, today anyone can be a creator if you have a mobile
01:04 phone now, you have such sophisticated editing tools, you can shoot short form video as a
01:08 category is really taking off and we are seeing a lot of our creations come from small places
01:13 all across the country.
01:15 We spoke about one of our top creators who comes from Anantapur and he has a huge team
01:19 based in Anantapur and so this democratization I think is really changing the content landscape
01:25 and I'd encourage all Eagles and all current students to really look at it in a serious
01:30 way.
01:31 Okay, for all our viewers, Eagles is what the HBS students call themselves and they
01:35 say…
01:36 Inside speak, sorry, inside speak.
01:38 Okay, so what do you tell these people because you know, earlier people used to say like
01:45 you know Supriya was mentioning, globalization is something that we talk about and now we
01:49 are talking about hyperlocal and the fact that now you don't have to be an English
01:53 speaking person to be successful, that barrier is really gone and so is geography.
01:58 Yeah, absolutely as I said before, if you look at a lot of the platforms across the
02:05 country today, a lot of consumption as well as creation is now happening across languages
02:10 mostly from non-urban, tier 2, tier 3 towns in languages other than English and Hindi.
02:16 It's a trend that we saw kick off with the growth of short form video as a category maybe
02:20 two or three years ago but now we are seeing it just continue and as we see more and more
02:25 technology and as more and more features now be released by different platforms, it really
02:31 is an invitation to everyone, anyone can be a creator today.
02:34 Okay, but parents are very worried, I mean I'm a parent myself and I think oh my god,
02:38 how much time is my child spending on social media, so what would you say to them because
02:42 we now understand that every industry is going to be having a digital connection and that
02:48 mobile phone that they are fiddling today is going to be a pathway to perhaps success
02:52 as well but also to sometimes dangers.
02:55 What would you say to parents like that?
02:58 Look I think making sure that YouTube in particular is a safe and responsible platform is literally
03:04 the number one thing that we care about.
03:06 I have a four-year-old daughter myself and so do everybody else who work at YouTube.
03:12 Everyone is connected to a child in some way and so we take that into account when we're
03:16 designing our products and so that I would say as a parent, I think each choice is individual,
03:23 it depends on every family's relationship with technology, at what age they want to
03:28 start exposing their kids, so it's a very important conversation and we are happy and
03:34 keen to participate in it and that's the way we would approach it.
03:39 Some parents tend to go the extreme, isn't it?
03:42 They say no devices at all, you have to be cut off and only then you can remain safe
03:46 in this world.
03:47 Is there any advocacy that you can do?
03:49 I know it's a very difficult path to tread, those kind of choices that you need to make
03:54 but what would you say to parents and to the youngsters as well who perhaps spend an inordinate
03:59 amount of time now on us?
04:01 Look as you said Uma, these are difficult decisions to make and they're entirely personal.
04:07 They depend, they vary from family to family but as a platform, our approach to this is
04:12 to create tools that allow parents, whatever your parenting style, to be able to moderate
04:16 the kind of content that your children watch or set things like screen time limits, etc.
04:21 So as a platform, we want to cater to all the parenting choices that exist out there.
04:28 You went to HPA, spent a good number of years here, most people when we are still in school
04:33 you wonder, oh my god, can I really make it and these people must be from some other kind
04:37 of magical world and with talents that I don't know about.
04:41 What would you tell to youngsters, all of them aspiring to be in an India where we talk
04:46 about making India and be innovators, be creators?
04:50 Yeah, well first of all when I was in school my only real ambition was to play cricket
04:54 for India.
04:55 Clearly that did not work out and I'm here today but on a more serious note, my own personal
05:01 journey has been one where I left India in the mid 2000s and I came back after many,
05:07 many years, 15, 16 years, last year for the first time and the reason I came back is because
05:11 India in particular is such a diverse, dynamic, exciting market to be in.
05:16 It is the future of growth.
05:17 So for kids at HPS and other eagles who are looking at this, I would just say there is
05:23 no better place to be right now than in India.
05:25 The next 10 years are going to be absolutely transformative and it's just the most exciting
05:30 career choice you could make to stay here and contribute.
05:33 Okay, thank you so much and that advice perhaps applies not just to the eagles but to students
05:38 everywhere across the country.
05:40 You do have quality education institutions and institutions like this in many ways that
05:45 build characters, personalities and make history as well.
05:49 In Hyderabad, with Ishaan and Nagaraju as camera person, Uma Sudhir, NDTV.
05:54 Thank you.