YouTube India’s Top Trends of 2024 Include T20, Ambani Wedding, Ratan Tata

Google has announced several year-end statistics for YouTube in India, including the top trending video topics, most popular creators, and most-played songs. The topics that people in India were most interested in were a mix of large-scale events, personalities and viral moments. While YouTube has not ranked these in order of popularity, the ICC Men's T20 World Cup, 2024 Indian Premier League and 2024 Olympics showed that sports, especially global-scale events that occur over several days or weeks, kept people watching. Other popular topics that made it to the top 10 included the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections, the Anant Ambani - Radhika Merchant wedding, Kalki 2898 AD, Ratan Naval Tata, Diljit Dosanjh, Ajju Bhai, and the “Moye Moye” meme arising from a Serbian song.

While YouTube did not rank these names and topics, it did say that videos with “Ambani” and “Wedding” in the title were watched over 6.5 billion times, with various guests posting all about the spectacular events, and multitudes of creators jumping into the fray to post reactions and other content which went viral. Videos about the ICC T20 World Cup received over 7 billion views in India. Diljit Dosanjh got 3.9 billion views including collaborations, podcasts and fan tributes, while the “Moye Moye” meme racked up 4.5 billion views across videos referencing it. Indian creator Carryminati’s parody of MrBeast was watched over 70 million times,

As for creators, YouTube’s data showed an interesting mix of global as well as Indian and regional creators. Ranked at the top was MrBeast, who visited India recently to interact with fans and collaborate with Indian creators. He has also announced he will be publishing videos dubbed in multiple Indian languages soon. He was followed by Filmy Suraj Actor, Suraj Thakral, Malayalam creator KL BRO Biju Rithvik, UR Cristiano (the official account of Cristiano Ronaldo), Box of Vengeance (a novelty account reviewing various types of sports balls), Stokes Twins, Priyal Kukreja, Album Creations, and Unknown Boy Varun.

The company pointed out the growing importance of shorts and live video, with several creators focusing on these formats to engage with their audiences. Creators are also leveraging YouTube’s subscription model to offer exclusive videos to paying viewers, establishing their own mini-OTT services with their own content directions and moderation policies. Shorts also give music creators secondary audiences, as popular songs can be used millions of times and even regional music can spread far and wide.

MrBeast, Stokes Twins and UR Cristiano also found themselves on YouTube’s global top-10 creator list, joined by CaseOh, Zack D. Films, Nick DiGiovanni, Jordan Matter, Mark Rober, The Trench Family, and Camilla Araujo. As for topics and people who trended the highest throughout the year, the 2024 US presidential election was of course a major topic, along with Kendrick Lamar, Sean Combs Scandal, Jujutsu Kaisen, Amazing Digital Circus, Hazbin Hotel, Dress to Impress, Deadpool & Wolverine, Sabrina Carpenter, and Helldivers 2.

Globally, Amazing Digital Circus made it to eight out of 12 of the lists that YouTube publishes in different countries, while the 2024 Olympics trended in 10 countries, with Australian breakdancer Raygun earning a special mention for meme virality. Original online franchises and series such as Gooseworx's animated series and Roblox's Dress to Impress quickly amassed fans. There were 25 billion views of videos related to Amazing Digital Circus, apart from its actual episodes. Video podcasts and gaming-related videos also propelled many creators to new heights, globally.