When we think of YouTube today, it feels impossible to imagine life without it. From movie trailers and music videos to tutorials and vlogs, it is a part of our everyday routine now. Hyderabad too has made the most of the platform, giving rise to several popular creators across food, tech, lifestyle, fashion and more.
But few know that the city’s connection with YouTube goes back much further, to March 22, 2006, to be precise. Yes! It was the day when the very first video was uploaded from India. And the location? Not a monument or a festival, but a simple street in Hyderabad that has now become a piece of India’s digital history.
India’s first YouTube upload
YouTube was barely a year old when the video was uploaded from Hyderabad. It marked the very first upload from India, and the video was a simple recording of a street with autos, scooters, and pedestrians going about their day.
On the Hyderabad SubReddit, where the video recently resurfaced, many users immediately joined in to guess the location of the video. Many confirmed that it is Ameerpet. One user commented, “I can confirm it is Ameerpet. I was in the second RTC bus 10k going from Secunderabad to Kukatpally”.
Another comment read, “I didn’t realize I was on YouTube for the first time from India. That’s my father’s Maruti Suzuki and 22nd March is my birthday. We were returning home from the temple… Unbelievable.”
One user asked the obvious question, “How do we know it is the first video from Indian?” to which another user replied that it was discovered earlier this year on the IndiaSpeaks subreddit, using search strings like “uploaddate=2006” and sorting results by date. This video turned out to be the first that remained visible. “Of course, there might be earlier uploaded-then-deleted videos,” the user clarified, “but of the ones that remain, this seems to be the oldest evident one.”
Hyderabad, then and now
The Reddit discussion was quick to notice how the roads in Hyderabad were empty back then, a stark contrast to the growing traffic nowadays.
Some pointed out that while the roads looked less busy, one thing hadn’t changed at all: Hyderabad’s driving. Users joked about how rash and unpredictable the traffic seemed even back in 2006, proving that some things remain constant despite the years.
