Aevy
University of Mumbai
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
16K followers
288 connections
16K followers
288 connections
About
Building India's best edutainment channel.
Articles by Shirsh
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16K followers
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Shirsh Bajpai shared thisOur Aevy TV video on loneliness hit 3,50,000 views on the second attempt. And today, 2 years later, the same video is at 6,14,000 views. But I have to admit: The first version was a complete flop. The video was pitched by Sumit, one of the editors on our team. We were in a meeting discussing topics and I suggested dating apps in India. Nobody on the team could relate to that. "We don't have many friends who date. But we do have friends who talk about loneliness." So we made it. I wrote the script. The team edited it. We built a thumbnail with a sad man and a line graph behind him. The title was "Why Are Indians Becoming More LONELY?" It felt like it should work. In the first 7 hours and 52 minutes, it ranked 10 out of 10 on our channel. Dead last. I remember sitting at my desk staring at the analytics and feeling that familiar sinking feeling every creator knows. Here's what actually went wrong: 1. The thumbnail gave the viewer nobody to identify with 2. "Indians" was too broad to make any single person lean in 3. The packaging was speaking to everyone, which meant it was speaking to no one So I went back. I rebuilt the thumbnail. I narrowed the title from "Indians" to "Indian MEN" and added "Explained With DATA." The video itself didn't change. Same script. Same edit. Same runtime. Then I republished the packaging. The numbers moved almost immediately. Impressions went up. CTR went up. Comments poured in from men who felt the video was made specifically for them. Over the next 9 days: 1. Performance flipped from 10 of 10 to 1 of 10 on our channel 2. Total views crossed 3,50,000+ And over the next 2 years, it kept compounding and eventually reached 6,14,000 views. What stuck with me wasn't the number. It was realizing how close we were to burying a video that actually worked.
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Shirsh Bajpai shared thisOver the years, after mentoring thousands of editors at Aevy, we noticed one pattern: Most editors don’t earn less because they lack talent, but because they’re stuck in a few limiting habits: 1. They limit themselves to one role Most editors box themselves in. They're "just an editor" or "just an animator" or "just a designer." But the brands and creators paying top rates don't want three people to manage. They want one person who can cut the video, animate the b-roll, and design the thumbnail. The generalists are the ones doubling their rates. The specialists are the ones competing on price. 2. They still debate whether to adopt gen AI If you're still arguing about whether to learn Kling, Nano Banana, or how to use Claude for research, you've already fallen behind. The editors making the most money right now are the ones shipping 3x faster because they stopped obsessing over manual work. 3. They confuse craft with output A lot of editors obsess over the edit itself and forget that clients pay for results, not effects. They spend 40 hours polishing a video nobody watches. Here's the reality: The editing industry is splitting into two tiers. One tier is stuck doing $200 cuts, refusing to learn AI, and only offering one skill. The other tier is stacking skills, using AI to move faster, and charging 5-10x more. The gap between these two groups is widening every day. Most editors won't make the jump because it feels uncomfortable to learn design when you're "an editor," or to use AI when you've spent years mastering manual workflows. But the ones who do? They stop trading hours for money. And they stop being replaceable.
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Shirsh Bajpai shared this99% of viewers don't care about how well a video is edited. I've been saying this to editors in our cohort at Aevy for a while now, and it still gets pushback every single time. The industry has trained editors to believe a specific set of lies: → Good editing = more views → Expensive gear matters the most → Skills beat taste → More effects = better videos So editors spend years chasing the wrong things. They upgrade their cameras. They buy the newest plugins. They learn every transition, every masking technique, every motion graphic trick. And their videos still flop. But here's the kicker... What viewers actually care about: → Did the first 3 seconds pull me in? → Did the pacing keep me watching? → Did the story go somewhere? → Did I feel something by the end? None of that requires a 4K camera. None of it requires After Effects expertise. None of it requires a $300 plugin stack. It requires taste. Taste is knowing when to cut. Knowing what to leave out. Knowing which 10 seconds of a 2-hour podcast are the ones that actually hit. Taste is why a creator with a webcam and basic jump cuts can pull 10M views while a technically perfect edit with 40 hours of polish gets 400. A video editor isn't judged by how many effects they can stack. They're judged by whether the viewer stays. The best editors in our cohort are the ones who stopped obsessing over skill and started studying why people watch in the first place. Gear gets outdated. Software changes every year. Effects go out of style. Taste compounds.
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Shirsh Bajpai shared thisWe run India's biggest video editing cohort. Here's the exact tool stack we use at Aevy. 1. Editing → Photoshop → Premiere Pro → After Effects 2. Sound design → FL Studio → Logic Pro 3. Gen AI → Image gen: Nano Banana Pro, Midjourney → Research: Claude → Video gen: Kling motion control, Kling 3.0 (currently exploring Seedance 2.0) But when people ask me which tools we use, they're almost always asking the wrong question. They think the tools are the differentiator. They think if they learn Premiere deeply enough or master After Effects, the work will follow. It won't. I've watched editors with access to multiple tools to produce videos that flop. And I've watched editors with a cracked version of Premiere build careers that outpace everyone around them. The tool isn't the edge. The taste behind the tool is. Tools have a shelf life. Premiere wasn't the standard 20 years ago. Seedance didn't exist 2 years ago. Kling might be irrelevant in 6 months. But taste doesn't expire. Pacing doesn't expire. The ability to spot the right 10 seconds in a 2-hour podcast doesn't expire. The tools are the easy part. The hard part is learning what to do with them.
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Shirsh Bajpai shared this"Why should we hire you?" Honestly, if I were job hunting for an editing role today, I'm not sure I'd answer that with a document. Recruiters are going through hundreds of applications that look almost identical. Same layouts, same bullet points, same "creative problem solver" line. Unfortunately, it's just how saturated things have gotten. A 30-second video resume does something a document can't - it shows your personality, proves your skills the moment someone hits play, and holds attention longer. Great way to visually showcase skills. I tried one for fun! Built this using #Photoshop for the visuals, #Premiere for the edit, #AfterEffects for the motion - all inside Adobe Creative Cloud. Turned my application into a showreel instead. https://lnkd.in/gZq3xk9A Maybe worth trying if you're in the middle of a job search right now 🙂 Your CV doesn't have to just list what you can do. It can show it. #AdobeCreativeCloud #PaidPartnership
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Shirsh Bajpai shared thisI struggled for 6 years. No growth. No money. Just burnout. It wasn't until the last 3 years that everything changed. I didn't suddenly get more talented. I didn't get a better camera. I got a team. For 6 years I tried to play the "Solo Creator" game. I wrote alone. I filmed alone. I panicked alone. Now I sit in an office with smart people every day. When a video fails, we laugh about it. When an idea is bad, we fix it together. Making videos is hard. There are too many levers: • Scripting • Lighting • Editing • Psychology Doing all of that by yourself is unnecessary torture. You can go fast alone. But you only go far together. If you are serious about 2026, stop trying to be a lone wolf. Find your pack :)
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Shirsh Bajpai shared thisMy YT shorts get millions of views because of this one concept I figured and follow even today. The late designer Virgil Abloh had a rule. He said you only need to change an existing design by 3% to make it yours. I used this exact philosophy to build my channel. I was watching pottery videos on Instagram. Someone takes a lump of ugly mud and spins it into a beautiful vase. It gets 150 million views. Why? Because humans love transformation. We love seeing something messy become something organized. I realized I could do that. I didn't have mud. But I had messy videos made by video editors from our school. So I applied the "Pottery Format" to video editing. I showed the ugly video turning into a beautiful sequence. Same psychology. Different niche. 3% difference. It became our biggest growth engine. You don't need to invent the wheel. 1. Find a format that works in another industry. 2. Apply your specific skills to it. 3. Add your unique personality. Innovation is just adaptation in a new context.
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Shirsh Bajpai shared thisWe get millions of views on our YT Shorts, yet no one is able to copy us. I learned early on that if your content is good, people will copy you. That is just a fact of life. So you need a defense. You need a moat. A moat is a deep ditch around your castle filled with crocodiles. It stops your competitors from walking in and taking your spot. I have a video format that gets millions of views. It would be very easy to copy the style. But nobody has successfully done it. Why? Because my moat is a resource that only I have. To make my videos, you need access to terrible, first-time video edits. I have trained 4,000 students. I have a database of thousands of bad edits. My competitors don’t. They can copy my editing style. They can copy my captions. But they cannot copy my raw materials. If you want to win long term: 1. Don’t just rely on talent. 2. Build a resource others can’t access. 3. Make your content impossible to replicate.
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Shirsh Bajpai shared thisI’ve worked with hundreds of content creators who’ve pulled in millions of views. There’s one pattern that shows up every single time. They don’t depend on motivation. Because motivation burns fast. It shows up on day one. Maybe it’s still there on day seven. By day thirty, it’s gone. And when motivation disappears, consistency goes with it. The answer isn’t “more discipline.” The answer is a format. A format is a repeatable container for ideas. Look at the Kapil Sharma Show. • Same set. • Same characters. • Same structure. For over a decade. It keeps growing because he doesn’t wake up asking, “What should I make today?” He just executes the format. We do the same thing. Our format is called “How to Fix.” 1. We take a bad video edit 2. We critique it 3. We fix it live That’s it. It works every time. It gets millions of views. And it costs almost zero creative energy to execute. If you want to last as a creator: Stop chasing viral videos. Build a viral format.
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