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When Indian YouTuber Ajey Nagar steps out of his house, even in the sweltering summer heat, he wears a black hoodie to disguise himself. Nearly 7 million people subscribe to the 19-year-old’s YouTube channel, and Nagar is regularly accosted by teen fans. “I can’t go to malls or restaurants,” Nagar tells TIME from his studio in Faridabad, a city bordering the Indian capital of New Delhi. (The team use part of his family home to produce Nagar’s popular comedy sketches.)
Popularly known as CarryMinati, Nagar posted his first video on YouTube at the age of 10. He successfully tried his hand at video game live streaming, before finding his niche in 2016: producing diss tracks taking on what he calls, “cringe-worthy” user-generated videos on platforms like Facebook and TikTok. Since then, his channel has taken off, in part because of soaring Internet access in India, Nagar says. Some 500 million Indians are already online, making India the world’s second-largest online market, and nearly 900 million others could be joining them soon.