The Nepali YouTubers with 13 million subscribers

Top Weekly Highlights

🌎 The Big Story: The Nepali YouTubers with 13 Million Subscribers
💪🏼 Sansar ma Nepali: Historic Bronze Medal for Nepal in Paralympic Games
🇳🇵 Nepal Tira: Rare vultures, FDI from tax havens, 5-year passes to China
🤯 Sachi ho: The only monument dedicated to the defeated army

The Big Story

The Nepali YouTubers With 13 Million Subscribers

If you’ve never heard of Aayush and Abhay, don’t feel too bad.

You probably aren’t their target audience.

The two brothers from Nepal have three YouTube channels that have a combined subscriber base of more than 23 million subscribers, and over 16 billion views!

⭐️ Aayush & Abhay: 13 million subscribers, 13 billion views
⭐️ Aayush & Abhay Reacts: 7.2 million subscribers, 3 billion views
⭐️ ASquareCrew: 2.7 million subscribers, 900 million views

Although their first video was back in 2017, their exponential growth only started a year ago, when they went from 860,000 to 12,000,000 in a span of one year.

Although it’s difficult to pinpoint exact reasons, here are some factors that probably contributed to their explosive growth:

🙊 Unspoken Videos: The boys create videos without any spoken dialogue and rely completely on visual storytelling. They use sound effects, fast editing to emphasize scenes, so anyone watching can understand what’s going on in the video.

📺 YouTube’s Shorts Algorithm: For a couple of years now, YouTube has been heavily pushing YouTube ‘Shorts’, in an effort to compete with TikTok. Out of their 1,178 videos, 95% are shorts. Their most popular short has 250 million views, and nearly 50 of their videos have more than 50 million views.

♻️ Recycled Content: The boys are constantly recycling viral videos from other social media platforms and creators, especially Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) from China. If a video went viral in China, there is a chance a similar themed one can go viral in Nepal.

Sansar Ma Nepali

🥉 First Medal for Nepal: Palesha Shrestha made history by becoming the first Nepali athlete to win a Paralympic medal at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Shrestha falls under the ‘K44’ disability class, which is defined as athletes with unilateral arm amputation. Believe it or not, this is Nepal’s third olympic medal, but the first to be officially recognized. Bidhan Lama and Tejbir Bura from Nepal were awarded exhibition medals, which are unfortunately, not officially counted by the IOC.

😔 Another Nepali Shot and Killed in the United States: Last week, we wrote about 3 different cases of Nepali-origin women killed by their partners in 2024.

A week hasn’t passed, and we have another case.

Muna Pandey, a Nepali nursing student, was allegedly shot by 51-year old Bobby Singh. This time though, it wasn’t a partner who killed the victim, but an acquaintance who seems to have been obsessed with her.

Here’s what we know so far:

📌 On 8:40 PM Saturday, video footage showed Muna and Bobby Shah in front of her door.
📌 She was carrying several items including a black purse. Shah was holding a gun and telling Muna to open the door.
📌 When she asked him what he was going to do, Shah racked the slide of the gun and told her again to open the door.
📌 After an hour, Shah left the apartment, carrying the same black purse Muna had been holding earlier.

According to the Houston Chronicle, police received 2 important tips which led them to Bobby.

✅ Tip #1: A person informed police that Pandey previously worked at Kathmandu Curry, a Nepalese restaurant located in Southwest Houston. This person put police in contact with another individual who described Shah as a ‘regular customer of the restaurant’. This person, who was considering a business partnership with Shah, also provided police with a copy of Shah’s driver’s license and phone number.

✅ Tip #2: Another person revealed to the police that she had met Shah through a ‘Sugar Daddy’ website back in 2012.

Based on the tips, Houston police caught Shah at a traffic stop.

Shah is facing capital murder charges and being held without bail.

🇺🇸 10,000 visas in 10 months: In the first 10 months of this fiscal year, 10,988 Nepali students were granted visas to study in the United States. In July alone, 1,788 F1 visas were issued to Nepali students. Based on the current rate of approvals, the total number of F1 visas granted for 2024 will probably be double of what it was last year (5,727). In 2023, 15,000 Nepalis were officially enrolled at US colleges.

Know any stories/news about Nepalis abroad? Reply to feature them!

Nepal Tira

Weekly Briefing: What You Need To Know

💰 30% of Nepal’s FDI come via tax havens: A recently published survey report by the NRB states that up to 30% (USD 662 million) of foreign direct investments come from tax haven countries such as Ireland, Singapore, West Indies and others. Experts say that investors send the money to these countries, ‘recycle it’ and send it back to Nepal as a clean investment to save on taxes.

👍 No corruption time limit: Submitting to public outcry, leaders of all parties have agreed to remove a proposed amendment to a bill that would prevent corruption investigations over five years old. Earlier, lawmakers had proposed that corruption cases be prosecuted within five years from the date when the misconduct is discovered.

🪪 Kasle dincha aba driving license: The federal government has stopped printing smart driving licenses, and has asked the provincial governments to take over. As per the constitution, provinces are responsible for transportation management, which includes printing licenses. 1.7 million people are currently waiting for their smart licenses. However, if you or someone you know studies or works outside, you can still get the license via the federal government by submitting a request.

🛂 Five-Year Passes to China: Residents of Manang, Mustang, Humla and 12 other districts will be allowed to apply for five-year passes to travel to China. Before 2007, Nepali and Chinese nationals from border districts could travel up to 30 KM inside each other’s territory without restrictions. After 2007, both sides started to issue one-year passes, which was disrupted during COVID.

🦟 Kati lai dengue lagyo re? Dengue cases in Nepal have skyrocketed in recent years. In 2023 alone, more than 50,000 cases were recorded in Nepal. Although we only have 6,000 cases so far in 2024, the year is far from over. In August 2022, 3,780 cases were recorded. The very next month, it crossed 23,000. High rainfall due to climate change, mismanaged waste disposal systems and increased urbanization are thought to be the main reasons for this trend.

🦅 Nepal ma Rare Vultures: A recent survey in Sudurpashchim Province identified 147 nests of rare vultures, including endangered species like the white-rumped and slender-billed vultures. The survey found that Kanchanpur district is a key habitat hosting 120 nests. Recently, Nepal has taken steps towards protecting the vultures via the Vulture Conversation Action Plan.

Sachi ho? 😱

yo hapta lai eti nai! Next tuesday, pheri bhetaula hai! ✌️

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