So after a month long tussle, the writing is officially on the wall: Indian YouTube channel T Series has taken over popular opinion channel PewDiePie as the most subscribed YouTube channel in the world. Stung initially at the brilliant competition, the fans desperately tried to increase PewDiePie’s count, even resorting to create fake accounts if need be, but they couldn’t
As T Series and its YouTube channel both receive worldwide acclaim, one man in the heaven would certainly be shedding tears of joy at this unexpected fame that his creation has received. Who knew that a man, who had begun his living by selling juice on carts, would soon revolutionise the way entertainment is produced in India, even though his life was cut short.
Yes, we’re talking about none other than the founder of this mega brand, Gulshan Kumar Dua. Born on May 5, 1956 to fruit juice vendor Chandra Bhan Dua, Gulshan initially assisted his father with selling juice on the carts. Later, when the family managed to acquire a shop that sold audio and video cassettes, the entrepreneur within Gulshan took birth.
He observed that despite the popularity of LP records and audio cassettes, they were not a popular phenomenon, owing to the high prices of the products. Besides, it was not necessary that the highly priced objects had a rich quality. So Gulshan devised of a plan, where he would not only sell cassettes that were affordable, but also with a rich sound quality, and thus T Series was born.
Starting with selling devotional bhajans, Gulshan soon entered into the audio industry, and created a storm. He groomed some of the bhajan singers, who later went on to become huge superstars in the genre of singing, be it Abhijeet, or Sonu Nigam, or Anuradha Paudwal, or even Hariharan, who initially also sang bhajans for the T series label.
Following his success in the devotional industry, Gulshan Kumar now turned towards the cash cow, i.e. Bollywood. Initially he did not get much success, despite having released a moderately successful soundtrack of Lallu Ram, with music by Ravindra Jain. However, they hit jackpot, when they released the soundtrack of Mahesh Bhatt’s romantic musical ‘Aashiqui’, which was a box office blockbuster. This was 1990, and Gulshan Kumar was now the undisputed ‘Samrat’ of the audio industry in India.
Sadly, his brilliant life was cut brutally short, when Gulshan Kumar was assassinated by D Company assassins at Jeeteshwar Mahadev Mandir in Mumbai on 12 August 1997. It happened that Dawood Ibrahim, the underworld Don, had asked through Abu Salem to Gulshan Kumar for extortion money, which the bold devotee of Shri Shiva and Parvati flatly refused.
However, T Series didn’t end there. Taking the reins at a young age of 20, Bhushan Kumar continued the legacy of his father, giving impetus to pop music, as well as established Bollywood stars. Once established firmly, Bhushan Kumar also turned towards content oriented cinema since late 2014, and has given content oriented entertainers like ‘Baby’, ‘Airlift’, ‘Hindi Medium’, ‘Tumhari Sulu’, ‘Sonu ke Titu ki Sweety’, ‘Raid’ etc. He is in no mood of stopping anywhere, and has also agreed to finance ground breaking projects like ‘Cheat India’, ‘Batla House’, ‘Taanaji – the Unsung Warrior’, ‘Mogul’ etc..
It was an illustrious part of this entrepreneurship that T Series launched its YouTube channel in 2006. Catering to every choice imaginable, from music to movies, bhajans and beyond, the channel first gave a significant threat to PewDiePie as they crossed 60 million subscribers in less than eight months, from the 30 million in the beginning of 2018.
Despite trying every trick in his sleeve, neither PewDiePie nor his over enthusiastic fans could stop the victory march of T Series. As of now, the Indian channel is more than 2 lakh subscribers ahead of PewDiePie, and Bhushan Kumar Dua will for sure be having the last laugh now.
