Ankur Warikoo — connecting money-management content with a creator business and WebVeda
From a nearbuy CEO who made content to recruit, to a full-time creator who grew channels with a team, recorded 2024 brand collaboration and endorsement revenue of INR27,600,000, and then focused on the WebVeda education business.
Ankur Warikoo is an Indian creator covering money management, careers and self-improvement. The 2024 brand collaboration and endorsement revenue he disclosed in January 2025 was INR27,600,000, approximately KRW415,770,000. Dividing that annual figure by 12 gives an approximate monthly average of KRW34,650,000. This is revenue for the content business he runs with his wife, and it was disclosed separately from course revenue for the education platform WebVeda.
In 2024, his YouTube content received about 800,000,000 views, and YouTube advertising revenue was KRW0. With ad monetization turned off, he generated content-business income from brand collaborations, speaking engagements and book royalties.
From a dream of science to entrepreneurship
As a child, his dream was to earn a PhD in the United States, join NASA and become a scientist who went to Mars. In 2002, he entered a physics PhD program in the United States on a full scholarship. His father, who was not well off, borrowed INR55,000 to arrange his son's one-way ticket to the United States. But Warikoo realized he was not happy studying physics, quit the PhD program at age 24 and returned to India.
After returning, he completed an MBA at the Indian School of Business (ISB) and worked at the consulting firm Kearney. He started an internet business with alumni, left consulting in 2009 to devote himself to startups, and in 2011 came to lead Groupon's India business. In 2015, he and fellow executives acquired Groupon's India business and launched it as an independent company, nearbuy.
Content that began as a recruiting tool for the company
As a company CEO, his purpose in building up content activities was to find good employees. Because it was difficult to compete on high salaries, he wanted to show directly what kind of culture the company had. On Quora, a question-and-answer platform, he talked with people and answered questions about company operations and his own experience. He recalled that from 2013 to 2015, this activity led directly or indirectly to more than 12,000 internship and job applications.
There is also a small anecdote about the LinkedIn video series 'warikoo Wednesdays'. While waiting for the video feature to be enabled on his account, he tagged the LinkedIn CEO in a post and asked when he could use it; within one hour, he received a reply from a representative that the feature had been enabled. The subject of the first video he made based on that experience was 'If you do not ask, the answer is always no.' Because it happened to be Wednesday, the series name he attached later became a promise to post a video every week.
In 2017, he expanded his activities to YouTube and Instagram. His first YouTube video recorded 628 views over three months. His first Instagram post received 3 likes and zero comments.
The turning point after leaving Nearbuy
The turning point came when he stepped down as Nearbuy CEO at the end of 2019. He decided to take a three-month break and experiment with content production. He hired a team, established a process for publishing consistently across platforms and began charging for corporate talks. As the activity grew and he found himself enjoying the creative process, the break kept getting longer, and in August 2021 he posted on his blog that he was spending the 18th month of a three-month break.
In March 2020, the content team started with six people. At the time, YouTube subscribers were 7,517 and Instagram followers were 14,596. Later, YouTube surpassed 1,000,000 in November 2021, and Instagram did so in December of the same year.
Steady publishing by the team
His content addresses the problems of managing money, choosing a career, and organizing daily life. He added stories about time management, relationships, and success and failure to experiences from startups and work life. According to material he released in 2023, more than 80% of the users who encountered his content were aged 18 to 30, and they mostly lived in India.
His ability to explain his experiences in an easy-to-understand way was also honed through practice. He recorded his thoughts as audio on his commute, then a month or two later selected and listened to the files again. Comparing the emotions he had intended to convey at the time with the emotions he felt when listening later, he examined how his story was communicated to others.
A team called wariCrew handled consistent publishing together. When it was unveiled in 2023, it had 8 content staff, collaborating remotely and producing on a two-week cycle. One weekly production example shared by the content operations manager included 7 Reels, 7 Shorts and 2 long videos. While filming one video, they edited another and prepared the script for the next week’s video at the same time. They refined the openings of short videos, the way long videos unfolded, thumbnails, and subtitles separately and released them tailored to each platform.
Criteria for Choosing Brand Collaborations
In figures disclosed in January 2025, his main personal-finance YouTube channel had 5,880,000 subscribers and his Instagram had 3,710,000 followers. On LinkedIn as well, 2,410,000 people followed him. He also ran a newsletter and podcast, meeting readers through writing, video, and audio.
As he operated content at this scale, brands approached him asking him to introduce their products and services. In January 2025, he said on his podcast that he receives about 300–350 collaboration inquiries each month. The brands he actually worked with were one or two per month.
When deciding on collaborations, he looked at three criteria: whether he had used and been satisfied with the product himself as a consumer, whether he had known the founder or CEO beforehand, and whether the brand had been operating for more than 5 years. He explained that he works with brands that meet at least two of the three.
The Shift Toward WebVeda
In January 2025, the place he said he was spending 80% of his time was the education platform WebVeda. He treated brand collaborations as a source of income needed to grow this business, and he also announced a plan to further reduce dependence on collaborations going forward. At this bootstrapped company, which operates without outside investment, the people he named as those to whom he was accountable were viewers and students.