Raj Shah and Viren Gathani on building outside Mumbai and Bangalore, and why 2026-27 is the right launch window for Bharat’s own video platform.
AHMEDABAD: Startup founder lore in India overwhelmingly flows through Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi NCR. When MeTubez’s founding team made the decision to build from Ahmedabad in 2020, it was a deliberate rejection of that geography. The thesis: founders who build inside Bharat see the market differently than founders who build for it from a distance.
“Startups in metros build for other metro users. They solve problems they understand — their own. If you want to build for Tier 2, 3, 4 India, you need to be where that India actually lives, creates, and consumes,” said Raj Shah, COO of MeTubez and Director of Swytch Web3 Technologies Pvt Ltd.
The 2026-27 launch window reflects a convergence Shah views as structural. Four forces have aligned simultaneously, each of which independently could support a platform play, but together make this moment historically significant.
First, government policy. Digital India, Make in India, and Atma Nirbhar Bharat have created regulatory and funding tailwinds favouring homegrown platforms with Indian data sovereignty.
Second, infrastructure maturity. 75 crore smartphone users and data pricing at ₹9 per GB — cheapest in the world — have democratized video creation and consumption infrastructure to a level that did not exist five years ago.
Third, creator economy depth. 4.12 million regular creators, 66% from non-metro cities, represents a structural supply that current platforms do not economically serve. The gap is widening.
Fourth, content format readiness. The vertical-first wave has saturated. Advertisers, creators, and viewers are showing appetite for the next evolution — landscape mobile-native, India-first.
Operating from Ahmedabad also carries structural economics. Office cost, team cost, operational cost, and talent retention all come at Mumbai or Bangalore levels divided by roughly three. For a bootstrapped-to-Series A journey, this geography extends the runway and reduces burn.
“The USA has YouTube. China has Bilibili. Japan has Niconico. Korea has Naver TV. India has never had an answer. We’re building it, from where Bharat actually lives,” said Shah.
MeTubez is now live on Google Play Store and Apple App Store, scaling toward 50 lakh monthly active users within 18 months.
Follow Raj Shah on LinkedIn for updates on MeTubez’s journey. For media and partnership enquiries, reach info@twentiesentertainment.com Download the app now!
