How a Juice Seller Built T-Series - He Was Extorted and Assassinated

T-Series is the most-subscribed YouTube channel in the world. Two hundred and ninety million subscribers. More than any musician, any celebrity, any media brand on the platform. India's answer to Hollywood, Bollywood, and the entire global music industry on one channel. The man who started it sold fruit juice from a stall in Daryaganj, Delhi. He never saw the YouTube era. On 12 August 1997, Gulshan Kumar was shot sixteen times outside the Jeeteshwar Mahadev temple in Andheri, Mumbai. He had gone for his morning prayer. He was 41 years old. The men who killed him had been hired by the Mumbai underworld — the same network that had been trying to extort him for months, and that he had refused to pay. The juice seller who built India's biggest music empire was dead. What happened to T-Series after that is the other half of the story. What you'll find out in this episode: → From juice stall to cassette king. Gulshan Kumar grew up helping at his father's fruit-juice counter in Daryaganj, Old Delhi. He saw something in the audio cassette market that the established players had missed: the price was too high and the devotional music segment was untouched. He started recording bhajans and spiritual songs, pressing them on cheap cassettes, and selling them for ₹5 when the market price was ₹20. HMV and Polydor had dismissed devotional content as low-value. Gulshan Kumar made it T-Series' core product — and built the most distributed music catalogue in India. → How T-Series disrupted India's music industry. Founded in 1983 as Super Cassettes Industries, T-Series didn't compete with the majors on their own terms. It undercut them on price, went directly to kirana stores and small retailers that music shops ignored, and combined devotional content with film soundtracks at a time when Bollywood music was the single biggest driver of cassette sales. Within a decade, T-Series had overtaken HMV to become India's largest music label. Gulshan Kumar did not have a recording industry background. He had a fruit stall and a pricing strategy. → The extortion demand he refused. As T-Series grew, so did the attention from the Mumbai underworld. Extortion demands — common in the 1990s entertainment industry in Mumbai, where Dawood Ibrahim's network expected a cut from any sufficiently successful business — came to Gulshan Kumar. He refused. The refusal was principled and, as it turned out, fatal. In the months before his assassination, Gulshan Kumar had been warned. He continued his morning temple routine regardless. → 12 August 1997 — the temple shooting. Outside the Jeeteshwar Mahadev temple in Andheri, Mumbai, at approximately 10:15 in the morning, Gulshan Kumar was shot multiple times by two assailants. He died at the scene. The assassination was immediately linked to organised crime. Abu Salem — a key operative in the Dawood Ibrahim network — was named. Music director Nadeem Saifi, one half of the famous Nadeem-Shravan composing pair, was also named as a conspirator. He fled to the UK, fought extradition for years, and was ultimately never brought back to India. Abu Salem was eventually convicted in related cases and is serving time in prison. → The son who rebuilt the empire. When Gulshan Kumar was killed, his son Bhushan Kumar was approximately 20 years old. He and his uncle Krishan Kumar took over T-Series. What Bhushan Kumar did with the company over the next two decades was rebuild it into something his father never imagined: a major Bollywood film production company and a YouTube giant. In 2018 and 2019, T-Series fought the most famous subscriber war in YouTube history — a months-long race with PewDiePie for the title of most-subscribed channel on the platform. T-Series won. Today, 290 million subscribers. The juice seller's company, larger than it has ever been. India's Richest is your front row seat to the Game of Thrones of India's wealthiest families. New episodes every day. 🔔 Subscribe and turn on notifications — new episodes every day. #indianeconomy #billionairemindset #businessdocumentary #businessempire #entrepreneurship #indiadocumentary #indiarising #LuxuryLifestyle #BillionaireLifestyle #Wealth #BusinessScandals