An eye-opening post by a Bengaluru founder has detailed the extreme lengths he went to as a teenager to escape online prejudice. To get foreign clients to pay him fairly for his design work, the then-17-year-old fabricated a persona hailing from the Netherlands, complete with a Western name and accent. The workaround allowed him to earn $50 per thumbnail and achieve a steady monthly income of ₹ 80,000. While his disguise opened doors that his Indian identity closed, the founder emphasised that it was his actual skill, not just the fake identity, that kept those international clients paying.
Shirsh Bajpai, co-founder at AevyTV and better known across social media as PapaOcus, shared his story on LinkedIn. “At 17, I pretended to be a guy from the Netherlands so foreign clients would pay me. It worked. I was making ₹80,000 a month, as a teenager.”
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Why did he pretend?
Bajpai explained that the problem was him being an Indian. “The internet was openly racist back then. Real messages I got: ‘curry muncher,’ ‘Paki, you Paki’. Clients simply wouldn't work with me once they knew.”
What did he do?
The founder explained that to get around this problem, he created a fake persona. “So I built a fake version of myself: A guy from the Netherlands. A thick American accent (you can hear it in my old videos ). A different name and a new backstory.”
{{/usCountry}}The founder explained that to get around this problem, he created a fake persona. “So I built a fake version of myself: A guy from the Netherlands. A thick American accent (you can hear it in my old videos ). A different name and a new backstory.”
{{/usCountry}}He recalled that, though this didn’t change his actual work in any way, people suddenly started saying “Yes”. It gave him “Payment in US dollars, not rupees. $50+ for a single thumbnail, in 2017-18. ₹80,000 / month, as a teenager in college. For 20 to 40 minutes of real work per job.”
How did the founder find the clients?
Bajpai shared that he found clients by replying to Twitter threads, building a collage of his work, and cold-DMing people.
The founder shared that his smooth sailing came to a sudden halt when his channel was featured by CarryMinati. People realised he was Indian, and it sparked a massive backlash against him.
“That's the irony. The accent that got me foreign clients was the same one that got me roasted in my own country. The market wasn't fair, and I couldn't fix that. So I found a way around it. But the disguise only opened the door. The skill is what kept clients paying once they walked through it.”
How did social media react?
An individual posted, “It's wild how often perception gets you the first opportunity, but competence is what keeps it.” Another added, “The most interesting lesson here isn't about the accent. It's about how markets often reward perception before they evaluate skill.”
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A third commented, “What's remarkable is that even after removing all the unfairness from the story, one thing remains true: A teenager was finding clients, cold-messaging strangers, and delivering work people were willing to pay for.” A fourth wrote, “Papa Ocus got the total slayer vibes from the beginning.”