YouTube · Our own channel

The GIFLIF Fest channel.

GIFLIF built its own YouTube channel from zero to 363,000 subscribers and more than 80 million views across 350 videos, watched well beyond India. It was grown in-house alongside the festival, from the festival's own talks and performances.

Covers we designed, and the template behind the rest

Waseem Barelvi — cover we designed
Waseem Barelvi — cover we designed
Devdutt Pattanaik — cover we designed
Devdutt Pattanaik — cover we designed
Gopaldas Neeraj — cover we designed
Gopaldas Neeraj — cover we designed
Rahat Indori — template
Rahat Indori — template
Ruskin Bond — template
Ruskin Bond — template
Saurabh Shukla — template
Saurabh Shukla — template
Anubhav Sinha & Taapsee Pannu
Anubhav Sinha & Taapsee Pannu
Rajat Kapoor
Rajat Kapoor
Dr. Athira Nair
Dr. Athira Nair

From the GIFLIF Fest channel production.

What we did

  • A locked cover template, applied automatically to every clip — so a catalogue this size stays visually consistent without a designer touching each one
  • Title writing — rewritten for how people actually search, in Hindi and English, without turning them into bait
  • Description and metadata — the full description, tags, chapters and end screens, filled in properly rather than left blank
  • Search and discovery — keyword research per video, so old footage keeps being found years after it was shot
  • Back-catalogue work — the same treatment applied backwards across 350 videos, not just new uploads
  • Result: 0 to 363,000 subscribers and 80M+ lifetime views, watched globally
ThumbnailsTitlesDescriptionsSearchAudience

Why it mattered

We did not buy this audience and nobody built it for us. It grew out of the festival itself — talks, performances, mushairas, sessions — filmed because we were already there, then given the care most organisations never give their back catalogue. Rahat Indori's mushaira alone has been watched tens of millions of times.

What we took from it is narrow and useful: the layer most channels neglect — titles, thumbnails, descriptions, search — decides whether good material is ever found.

The covers above are that template running at volume — one locked design, applied automatically to every clip. The point is not that any single one is a showpiece, but that hundreds of them are consistent without a designer in the loop.

This was YouTube work

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