First SA YouTuber reaches 1bn views

A 23-year-old South African has proved that “YouTube isn’t only an American or British person’s place” by hitting over 1 billion views on the channel he created at the age of 15.

Nadav Ossendryver from Glenhazel created the Latest Sightings – Kruger YouTube channel as an online source of real-time wildlife spotting for the visitors of the Kruger National Park. Since then, the Latest Sightings became a successful project across many social media platforms.

“My motivation for starting on YouTube was the fact that we were getting lots of amazing sightings. The best place to share photos was Instagram, so we shared the best of the best there. The best place to share videos was YouTube, so we started our YouTube channel,” Ossendryver stated.

Right now, the Latest Sightings – Kruger channel alone has over 1.44 million subscribers and is one of the 3, 000 top most-viewed YouTube channels in the world.

“People are drawn to passion,” the YouTuber explained the secret of his success. “If you make videos on topics you love, those people will watch. I have always been in love with wildlife and have wanted to share that love through the means of sharing people’s experiences.”

Thanks to the powerful vision of a teenager, not only the visitors get to see more animals during their safari but also the rangers can help the injured animals and fight poaching.

Besides, the users are not only able to watch the videos, but because of its crowd-sourcing model, can post their own encounters with nature and wildlife and earn money.

“Our YouTube channel has not only helped partners earn an income but importantly it has helped promote South Africa as an important wildlife destination,” the the youngest South African included on Forbes Africa’s Most Promising Entrepreneurs list added. “We want people to come to South Africa instead of going to other countries. Because our videos are seen around the world, wildlife and conservation are promoted in a time where our wildlife is threatened every day.”

The project keeps developing and one of the latest features includes travel bookings.

“What’s next for us is definitely still working on expanding our community to more parks. This will be the biggest driver of great content,” Ossendryver announced.