At the age of 20, Shashwat Verma, founder of AmrevX, has seen his company’s value reach INR 300 crore. However, he’s not satisfied and wants to reach INR 1,000 crore by 2025. In a chat with Manifest, he reveals how he plans to do so, why he turned down an offer from a political party to campaign for it, and more...

How did your career as an influencer kick-off?

I was an introvert living in a village. I was into mobile games and a friend suggested that we should stream it on YouTube. I was into gaming content to begin with. I had around 6,000 subscribers on this channel. I realised it was a good source of income as I was earning INR 30,000 per month at the age of 15. It was a big deal for me because not too many people were earning this in my village.

I left gaming because I was streaming PubG, and that was banned. That’s when I shifted to my business work. It was successful and Josh Talks offered me an opportunity to shoot with them. I agreed to this not knowing that they had two channels – one for English and one for Hindi. They’d approached me for English and that’s not my strong language. They had four million subscribers – and I started getting a few hate comments about me speaking in Hindi on an English channel. But the video got around 20-30 lakh views and people started recognising me.

Then, one of my friends, Umer Qureshi, messaged me to be part of a podcast. We shot an hour-long video and it got 30-40 lakh views. This motivated us to shoot more videos, and we booked one Airbnb in Delhi and shot seven to eight videos. All the videos got about 20-30 lakh views. His subscribers shot from 3,50,000 to 10,00,000. What I look to do is create and share content that’s not being created by anyone else. I started the trend about Rolex watches giving returns which was copied by several others later. That video got 4.5 crore views on his channel. I used contacts in the aviation sector and created content about how chartering flights is not as expensive as it sounds and that too got about 2.5-3 crore page views. These were friendly conversations that were shot. My team used to use one-minute snippets on my YouTube channel and every video was getting around 20-30 lakh hits. The whole collaboration got us 20 crore views overall.

When did you first realise you were ‘influencing’ people?

20 crore views is a big deal, so people were recognising me at many places I was visiting. I also started getting requests to be on multiple podcasts – the ones I liked I agreed to be part of and the others I rejected.

I started uploading the same videos on YouTube and Instagram. The Instagram following would be around 3,00,000 and YouTube was at 5,00,000. However, the snippets were over now, and we had to shoot fresh content.

At that time there was a trend ‘Ram Ram Bhai Saryane’ by Ankit Baiyanpuria, so I wanted to start a 100-day learning series. I did go to my camera person, who had a mini-setup, and told him I’d record 50 random videos on 50 topics. He created snippets and reels on the same. The first video went to 20 lakh views. My Instagram followers had grown to 4,70,000 and YouTube subsribers crossed 6,00,000.

A few days ago I realised that I won’t be able to make INR 1,000 crore through this business. No content creator has done it, so I’m now pivoting my business and putting in more effort. The videos I had created earlier were shot in bulk together and so I was wearing a white T-shirt in all of them. A lot of people raised questions about the same without realising that and I got a lot of engagement through this though.

Coming back to your question, I’ve seen 10,000 DMs on my Instagram, people asking to take selfies with me, and that’s where I feel I’ve influenced people and sort of become a star. 

When it comes to brand integrations - how does that work?

Following from the previous answer of people loving me and looking up to me, I’ve to be careful of what I do and speak. I don’t want anyone to suffer because of something that I’ve said.

Till around a year ago, I didn’t know about these brand deals. Then the opportunity to work on Reels started coming up and people paid lakhs for a video. I have an agency that handles me because they’re experts and I have no experience. They manage more than 70% of the finance creators in India. They tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. Recently, I got a political party that asked me to promote them. However, I turned that down because I didn’t want to promote any particular government scheme. I didn’t want to change my niche either.

When it comes to giving financial advice - things can also go wrong and make people lose a significant amount of money. Has this ever happened?

Touch wood I haven’t faced this yet. I’ve seen so many roast videos and people being targeted on YouTube, but I’ve been sort of safe.

Elvish Yadav, who has been in the news recently, three-four years ago he promoted a stock that went down to zero. But he didn’t know that. When one is new, he/she doesn’t know which campaigns to take up. Now, because I’ve done my market research, I turn down associations that I believe are scams. I also make sure I don’t give tips in terms of names of stocks to buy because I’m really scared of SEBI too.

Coming from a small town like Raipur - does it help with brand integrations as we’re seeing more brands wanting to reach out to the smaller towns?

Yes. My story was one of the hits. My father was and still is a shopkeeper. The place I stayed in has a population of 10,000 and till today has only two different internet providers.

Yes, this image of mine could have helped along with brands and consumers wanting to see the real India.

How do you look to distinguish and use different social media platforms? Do you have different content for Instagram versus YouTube?

I’m not active on Twitter or LinkedIn. My first social media manager insisted that I use LinkedIn, and I got around 3,300 followers on it. However, I realised that I’m a businessman. I hire from agencies, and I don’t want to be famous on LinkedIn. It’s also for people with experience, and I don’t have prior experience and high education. I’m just 20 and so what would I write there?

I use Instagram and YouTube Shorts. I put up one video on YouTube monthly. Shorts and Instagram are managed by the team. The editing and R&D team looks at each snippet to make sure it’s factually correct. Any advertisement, Reel, or YouTube video has to be verified before putting up.

The idea behind using Amrev vs Verma? And why the X?

We just turned three on 28 March. When we started, I intended to always help people. I wanted to start a tech company but didn’t have a name for it. There’s no famous Verma. We’ve heard of Aggarwals, Singhanias, and the Birlas. But there’s no famous Verma. However, I wanted to reverse it and founded Amrev.

X came from Elon Musk. That time he only had Space X. I’m a big fan of his business sense and I thought no matter where we expand Amrev and X, these two names will be constant.

Tips for budding influencers like you? I was told the first BMW Z4 M40i in Chattisgarh was bought by you…

It’s the third one in India. Via content buying a car so expensive is not possible. You need to have a business for the same.

One piece of advice would be – don’t sit idle and just work. Make a target, complete it, and work towards the next one. I pivoted a lot in my life. My simple motto is that if I feel something is not right, I’ll change it.

My next motto is to reach INR 1,000 crore. And pivoting to achieve it is important. The valuation of my business is 300 crore. We’re targeting an IPO by early 2025. If that happens, my company will eventually grow in terms of valuation.

This feature first appeared in the April edition of Manifest.