Good afternoon, and welcome to the tenth issue of Creator Games.
I’m Salil, co-founder of Third Studios, I lead everything creator economy at THIRD, and I’ll be writing and editing this newsletter every month.
Creator Games exists to discover, fund and tell the stories of the next generation of creator entrepreneurs. This newsletter is where we share the ideas, companies and opportunities driving that mission across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
If you’ve got any stories to share or any feedback, feel free to email me at salil@third.group.
— Salil
Today’s lineup:
Food Pharmer spent years testing other brands. Now Flipkart is selling his.
Lilly Singh left YouTube for Hollywood. Now she’s back.
UAE creators just got Amazon storefronts and ad budgets
Food Pharmer spent years testing other brands. Now Flipkart is selling his.
In 2023, Revant Himatsingka posted a reel on how much sugar was in Bournvita. Its maker, Mondelez, used legal pressure to get the video taken down.
This month, he’s the face of a Flipkart ad for his own protein powder. The same guy who created havoc for Indian brands by revealing hidden truths that no one did at that time, starts his own.
The Business Case →
Flipkart has launched a campaign for Only What’s Needed (OWN), the whey protein brand Himatsingka founded, to mark its launch on Flipkart during Big Billion Days, the marketplace’s biggest annual sale, per Campaign Brief Asia. The film was made by 22feet, an agency that’s part of Omnicom Advertising India.
The idea is an exam. A stern professor who tests everyone meets his match when Food Pharmer puts OWN’s seven protein quality checks on the table.
“If even one pack fails the protein test, the entire batch gets junked,” said 22feet’s executive creative director Ishan Mehta. Buyers during the sale can win three months of protein.
The seven checks are real lab tests, run on every batch at a third-party lab accredited by NABL (India’s national lab accreditation board), per OWN’s Amazon listing: protein accuracy, amino acid profile, heavy metals, melamine spiking, microbes, aflatoxins and pesticides. Every pack has a batch number you can match to its lab report.
His audience built it. 230,372 people voted on ingredients, says the listing. They even rejected his first name for the brand, Take Charge, per afaqs.
The scrutiny cuts both ways. Himatsingka says he has received eight legal notices, including two defamation suits worth about $210K each.
He’s turned down food brand deals worth, in his words, “more than what cricket captains get.” He has also said: “I know the scrutiny I’ll face is 10x. If I make even a single mistake, people will come at me hard.”
Flipkart isn’t OWN’s first marketplace. The brand opened pre-orders in mid-2025, sold only through its own website for six months, and went live on Amazon India in February 2026.
In 2025 he also told Moneycontrol he’d keep prices down by spending 20–30% less on ads than most brands, per News18.
Lilly Singh left YouTube for Hollywood. Now she’s back.
Damn, I grew up watching her videos. Back then, I didn’t even know being a creator was a thing. And now, as she returns, all those nostalgic feelings are coming rushing back.
In 2019, Lilly Singh took over NBC’s 1:30 a.m. slot from Carson Daly. She was one of the few YouTubers to get her own network talk show. Last Thursday, she posted a sketch called “My First Day Back at YouTube.”
The Business Case →
The video went up on 15 October. It’s her first sketch in years.
Her old characters are back, including her fictional parents Manjeet and Paramjeet, with cameos from YouTubers Alan Chikin Chow and Jeenie Weenie. Her Instagram caption: “This is for joy… PS: Another sketch next week.”
Singh started posting as “Superwoman” from her bedroom in Ontario in 2010 and built 33M+ followers across platforms. “A Little Late with Lilly Singh” ran two seasons on NBC with low ratings. She has said she had to film 96 episodes in three months on a tight budget.
She told YouTube’s official blog why she’s back:
The notes. Hollywood kept asking her to make work “more palatable,” “more marketable,” “less niche.”
Distribution. Fans in India, the UK and Trinidad and Tobago couldn’t watch her 2025 film Doin’ It because of how the distribution deals worked. “YouTube’s superpower is global distribution.”
Specificity. On YouTube she doesn’t have to stop a joke to explain what Diwali is.
She also pointed at India: “people are making hilarious content in all their regional dialects.”
This time the setup is bigger. She plans proper art and production departments, and no more Monday-and-Thursday upload grind.
The mix: situational comedy, cultural commentary, vlogs, higher-production formats and creator collabs, per Mashable India.
YouTube ran the big interview on its own blog, and opened it by saying creator success used to mean “doing whatever it took to graduate from the internet.”
UAE creators just got Amazon storefronts and ad budgets.
The first cohort of Amazon Creators Foundry is here. Kris Fade is launching snacks. Noor Stars has a fragrance. Mohanad Al Hattab is bringing sparkling water.
And all three are about to hit Amazon.ae, thanks to a programme run by a Dubai-based creator hub in partnership with Amazon.
The Business Case →
On 14th October, Creators HQ, the UAE’s first dedicated hub for creators, and Amazon Ads named the first cohort of the Amazon Creators Foundry, per WAM, the UAE’s state news agency. The programme was first announced in January at the 1 Billion Followers Summit, the UAE government’s creator conference in Dubai, per Khaleej Times.
Hundreds applied between 26 August and 9 September.
Other names in the cohort include Anas Bukhash (#ABTalks), Azza Zarour (Poco Loco perfume), Shamsa Al Dhaheri (Glowture skincare) and Yara Aziz (Hair 101 Tools).
What each creator gets:
$10,000 in Sponsored Ads cashback (Amazon’s search ads), plus up to $100,000 in Amazon DSP incentives (DSP is Amazon’s platform for buying display and video ads)
A six-month programme: business licensing with Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism, a seller account, trademark help through Amazon’s IP Accelerator, a storefront and Fulfilment by Amazon (Amazon stores and ships the stock)
A route to 20+ international markets through Amazon’s Global Selling programme
From Creators HQ: a UAE Golden Visa nomination and a year’s membership with studio access
Not everyone is starting from zero. Kris Fade says Fade Fit is seven years old and already sells across the GCC and Australia.
Mohanad Al Hattab put the problem plainly: “For creators, the hardest part of building a business isn’t the idea - it’s navigating everything that comes after: the logistics, the licensing, the scaling.”
Creators HQ was in our very first issue, when it launched a $1.36M (AED 5M) Social Content Fund with Alfan.
That was money for content. This is infrastructure for products.
🗞 Creator Gossip
Dhar Mann has bought a four-acre campus with nine sound stages and 175 sets, and he’s calling it Creator City. Every set will be a real brand, so the coffee shop could be a Starbucks and the store a Target. Two and a half years ago, YouTube and Facebook payouts were 95% of his revenue. Now it’s under 40%.
You Can See Everything, A24’s three-hour Elizabeth Holmes documentary co-directed by Nathan Fielder, opened to $15.6M from just 855 theatres. That’s the second-biggest documentary opening ever, on a budget of roughly $7M, with no sports ad buys and a flood of fan memes doing the marketing. 70% of the audience was under 35. The internet is still the best trailer.
Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat signed a vertical series deal with Fox. 25 shows will launch first on My Drama, a vertical drama app run by Fox-backed Holywater, and Fox gets first look at turning the hits into film and TV. Dhar Mann says he’s making 40 vertical dramas with Fox too. Pilot season now happens on your phone.
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