19-Year-Old Video-Editing Entrepreneur: Diwas Basnet

Building a personal brand, attracting clients, and leading a global team — Diwas shares his journey.

At just 19 years old, Diwas Basnet has started and scaled his video-editing agency, Unchained, with a team spanning Nepal, India & Bangladesh, creating content for top creators on LinkedIn and renowned brands. Also, the co-founder of the internship providing Nepali platforms, InternSathi and HireShore, the platform that helps companies hire remote talent from Nepal. Diwas is a visionary entrepreneur and a branding genius with an uncommon doer mentality.

In our interview, Diwas shares his journey of building a personal brand, approaching clients, managing his team, and everything in between.

The Beginning

A techie from a young age, Diwas loved spending time on his computer. At only 13, he started making and selling websites. His entry into the creative field began in high school when he worked for Instagram creators, designing graphics for their content.

His first gig in video-editing came from one of his Instagram clients for whom he had previously designed graphics. At the time, he had never edited a video. However, given his experience in graphics design, he took on the project and worked on it using his 8GB RAM laptop, which heated up severely during rendering. With his first $500, he bought a domain name, set up his website, and began his journey.

Unchained

The rise of short-form videos created a growing demand for high-quality edits to help creators expand their reach. Drawing on his expertise in video editing and responding to market demand, Diwas began by editing videos for content creators on his own. As his client base grew to include major companies like CeraVe and Ahrefs, the demands on his time increased. To keep up with the growing workload, he eventually founded Unchained, a video editing agency that makes videos for brands and creators. Focusing on video editing, content marketing, and content strategy, Unchained has been helping companies and creators grow their audience and increase their reach.

His team of 10 spans Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, with Nepali members mostly aged 18–20. Focused on skill-based hiring, his vision is to build a premium team, deliver high-quality work, and upscale his business.

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Diwas’s Role

At Unchained, Diwas focuses on leadership, branding, client acquisition, and team management. While he no longer edits videos himself, he oversees the marketing and client-side operations, delegating the editing tasks to his team. To ensure top-quality work, Diwas handpicks the best editors from around the world. For personal branding and client acquisition, he creates engaging content on LinkedIn, actively approaches potential clients, and maintains strong relationships with existing ones. His team includes Senior Editors, Operations Managers, and other key roles, streamlining the workflow. This emphasis on building a strong team brings out how crucial the right team is for success. He also acknowledges that while it is easier to find clients at his level, it is harder to build a team.

Additionally, he mentions that late submissions, client disapprovals, and rejections, while stressful, are unavoidable in the business.

Regarding Cross-Border Projects

The editors at Unchained have an impressive portfolio of high-quality content. Since they work with top LinkedIn creators and renowned brands such as CeraVe and Ahrefs, clients do not try to negotiate the pricing based on nationality. Besides, his work speaks for itself. He shares that the price that international clients find reasonable is often challenging for Nepali companies to accommodate.

The Everyday Journey

Considering his international client base, Diwas’s working hours are from 8 PM to 4 AM. Although he’s pursuing his bachelor’s degree, his growing business demands most of his time and energy, leaving less room for academics.

Something that stood out about him is his attitude of just starting. For instance, when the idea for InternSathi came to him, he created a Facebook page for it that same day and began working on it right away.

He also shares that as his income grows, the initial excitement of earning fades, leading to a constant want to level-up.

Diwas’s Strategy

Unchained offers discounted work to top creators in exchange for partnerships. This allows creators with large followings to showcase Diwas’s work to a broad audience, resulting in increased sales for Unchained.

The key to this strategy lies in how LinkedIn works. A simple comment from a top creator significantly increases the visibility of a post, as it reaches 50–60% of their audience. This boosts visibility and increases the chances of closing a client. One top creator referring you to another creates a chain effect while simultaneously expanding your portfolio through new projects.

He secured deals with a client with over 200,000 followers by sending a work sample, captioned, “We edited your video”. Most clients appreciate this effort, even if some don’t close the deal. It is through personal branding like this, that he grew his LinkedIn following from 0 to 15,000 in a year.

Currently, his goal is to target top creators, close deals with them, and use that to attract and secure high-ticket clients. These clients tend to nitpick less, pay more, and refer others with similar high-paying needs.

“A $15-paying client will have referrals who can pay $15. A $150-paying client will have referrals who can pay $150.”

It is also important to remember that client retention is more valuable than client acquisition. For a client paying 200,000 rupees per month, the focus isn’t on a one-time payment. Retaining that client for 2 years will result in nearly 5,000,000 rupees. Unchained has successfully retained clients by consistently delivering high-quality video edits on time, paired with excellent communication.

Beginner’s Freelance Guide

Just start. Research a relevant, in-demand skill. Choose a niche and get really good at it. Build your personal brand, and if you’re good at something, clients will come on their own. Do not hesitate to share your work, as that is how clients will approach you. Simultaneously, you need to approach them without the fear of rejection. When reaching out, offer them value — simply telling them that you’ll work with them won’t be enough. But elaborating to the clients on how you will work on their project, targeting them with a specific message, will capture their attention and you get a reply. That’s when you need to close the client. Additionally, if you want to work with international clients, learn the style of international creators and try to match their needs.

This initial phase will be difficult, but once you close a client, and provide them good service, they will refer you to others, expanding your client base.

“The key is to start and figure things out along the way.”

Also, communication should always be prioritized. International clients will accept occasional delays but they want regular communication. If the client has to inquire about their video delivery, you’ve already given a bad impression. Needless to say, the most important thing is to fulfill your promise to the client.

Reflections & Future Plans

Learning about everything Diwas has created, we couldn’t help but ask,” Do you sometimes ever look at everything you’ve accomplished, and think,’ Wow, I’ve done something amazing’?”

He replied,”I’m proud of what I’ve achieved with Unchained, but I know there’s still a long way to go in terms of growth and revenue. This feeling is reinforced when I see foreign creators producing similar content but earning significantly more. That said, it keeps me motivated to push for my business’s growth.”

Touching on his mentors, he mentioned that his first mentors were the founders of Naamche, with whom he had worked with in his early days. The others were his clients, who provided him with feedback to improve his work, ultimately making his team of creators even better.

He also mentioned that his parents have always been supportive of his work, though they always emphasize the importance of academics, even though he seems to take it rather lightly.

As we neared the end, I couldn’t help but ask Diwas the question every teenager is asked: if he plans to go abroad. To which he replied that he might pursue his Master’s Degree abroad, which would allow him to connect with his clients in-person, as he plans to scale his work to a bigger level. Otherwise, he said, going abroad would only be for travel, as his main goal is to earn in USD and spend in NPR.

“A motto you live by?”

“USD ma kamaune, NPR ma kharcha garne” (translates to: earn in USD, spend in NPR).

Writer’s note: An hour-long conversation with Diwas taught me about the power of trusting in one’s vision by simply starting — whether that’s reaching out through a LinkedIn direct message or honing your craft. Gaining insights into his freelance and entrepreneurship journey, along with a practical guide for beginners (myself included), I couldn’t be more content to have documented this conversation.

The Zerone team with Diwas