Tulsi, a small village in India’s Chhattisgarh state, has become known as ‘YouTube Village” because a third of its population makes videos for a living.

Online video content is more popular than ever, and it’s no wonder that millions of people around the world are working hard trying to build careers as video creators. But nowhere is the concentration of would-be YouTubers than in Tulsi Village, a small rural settlement in Chhattisgarh, where over a third of the 3,000-strong local population is actively making videos and posting them on YouTube for profit. Many of these creators used to be farmers, but after hearing that some of their peers had doubled, even tripled their income making YouTube videos, they decided that it was time for a career change.

The story of India’s YouTube Village began with two friends, Gyanendra Shukla and Jai Verma, who left their jobs as network engineer and teacher, respectively, to make video content. Before long they started earning a pretty penny from their new endeavor, and word of their success spread throughout the village, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps.

“I worked in SBI earlier, as a network engineer. My office had high-speed internet and I used to watch YouTube videos there,” Shukla told the ANI news agency. “I was already fond of movies. In 2011-12, a new version of YouTube was launched. At that time, there were very few channels on youtube. I was not satisfied with my 9 to 5 job. So I left the job and started with YouTube.”

Around  40 percent of the village population is now engaged in making video content for platforms like YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, with the youngest being 15 and the oldest being an 85-year-old grandmother. The 40 or so major channels based in Tulsi village range from comedy and music to education and DIY, with the most popular numbering over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube alone.