Riyaz Aly: India's 45M-Follower TikTok Prince The West Keeps Sleeping On

The Sun just dropped a "Who is Riyaz Aly?" explainer and honestly? It's about flipping time. While Western media jerks itself raw over Khaby Lame and Charli D'Amelio, an entire hemisphere of creator-economy royalty has been operating at scale that would make MrBeast blink. Riyaz Aly (रियाज़ अली) isn't "emerging." He's not "up and coming." He's been HERE, sitting on roughly 45 million TikTok followers before the Indian government yeeted the entire app into the sun in June 2020.

Let's rewind.

Born in Bhutan, raised in Jaigaon, India, Riyaz started posting lip-sync and dance clips on TikTok around 2017-2018, back when the platform was still Musical.ly's weird cousin. He blew up fast — like, stupid fast — riding the same wave as Faisal Shaikh (Mr. Faisu), Avneet Kaur, Jannat Zubair, and the rest of India's TikTok glitterati. By peak, his videos were routinely pulling 100M+ views. His duets and collabs with Avneet Kaur alone generated more engagement than most Hollywood PR campaigns. These weren't niche creators. These were mainstream celebrities to a billion-plus population.

Then Prime Minister Modi's government banned TikTok alongside 58 other Chinese apps, citing national security after the Galwan Valley border clash. Overnight, India's creator economy — one of TikTok's LARGEST markets with over 200 million users — got rugpulled. Creators who'd built eight-figure follower counts watched their entire empires vanish. Some pivoted to Instagram Reels. Some went to YouTube Shorts. Some, like Riyaz, went to literally all of them.

Here's where Riyaz separates himself from the pack: he actually SURVIVED the ban. His Instagram currently sits around 27-28 million followers. His YouTube channel has multiple million-subscriber tiers. He's appeared in Punjabi music videos. He's done brand deals with everything from fashion labels to FMCG giants. In a post-ban landscape where many Indian TikTok stars saw 60-70% audience attrition, Riyaz held remarkably well.

Compare that to the chaos that ensued. The TikTok ban created a power vacuum that Instagram Reels rushed to fill, but the monetization was (and still is) garbage compared to what creators earned on TikTok's Creator Fund equivalent or through direct brand deals on a platform with better discovery. Indian creators got squeezed. Some quit. Some went back to regular jobs. A few, like CarryMinati (Ajey Nagar), were already YouTube-native and barely noticed.

But here's the thing that grinds my gears about The Sun's explainer: the framing. Western outlets treat creators like Riyaz as "discoveries" when they've been operating at scales that dwarf most Western influencers. Riyaz Aly at peak TikTok had more followers than Logan Paul, KSI, AND Jake Paul COMBINED. Avneet Kaur has more Instagram followers than half the Marvel cast. Mr. Faisu's six-second clips generated more watch time than entire Netflix seasons. The West didn't "discover" these people. The West finally looked up from its own navel.

This pattern repeats across the global creator economy. We in Western media obsess over Adin Ross and Kai Cenat drama while Dong Yuhui (董宇辉) sells $100M+ in products during a single East Buy livestream. We dissect Pokimane's retirement while Xiao Yang Ge (疯狂小杨哥) pulls 100M+ concurrent viewers on Douyin. We analyze MrBeast's view counts while Li Jiaqi (李佳琦), the "Lipstick King," once sold 15,000 lipsticks in FIVE SECONDS.

The creator economy isn't American. It isn't even Western. It's GLOBAL, and the numbers coming out of Asia — particularly India, China, Indonesia, and the broader SEA region — make Western creators look like hobbyists. Riyaz Aly represents something bigger than one kid from Jaigaon. He represents a creator class that built empires in languages and markets Western platforms barely acknowledge.

So why does Riyaz matter RIGHT NOW? Because the globalization of creator culture is accelerating. TikTok's potential US ban has American creators sweating about the same fate Indian creators already lived through. The pivot strategies, the audience-retention math, the multi-platform diversification — Indian TikTok stars already beta-tested all of it. Riyaz Aly's post-ban survival playbook is literally the blueprint.

Also? He's 21. He's got another decade minimum in this game. The Sun asking "Who is Riyaz Aly?" in 2024 is like asking "Who is BTS?" in 2017. You're late. But better late than never, I suppose.

The creator economy doesn't need Western validation. Riyaz Aly doesn't need The Sun to explain him to anyone. But if Western media is finally waking up to the fact that influence isn't monolingual, isn't American, and isn't centered on a Logan Paul boxing match? Cool. Welcome to the party. The rest of us have been here for years.