Indian music record label and film production company T-Series is closing in on PewDiePie for the title of YouTube channel with the most subscribtions. But who or what is T-Series actually? Here are some facts about T-Series you might not know:

When was T-Series founded?

T-Series has been founded on 11 July 1983; 35 years ago in Delhi, India. The founder is Gulshan Kumar. Kumar, initially a fruit seller in Delhi, founded T-Series to sell pirated Bollywood songs before the company eventually began producing new music on their own.

Gulshan Kumar, T-Series’ founder got murdered by a gang

Gulshan Kumar was murdered by the Mumbai Mafia syndicate D-Company in 1997. Since then, T-series has been led by his son Bhushan Kumar and younger brother Krishan Kumar.

T-Series’s Youtube network

On YouTube, T-Series has a multi-channel network, with 29 channels that have more than 140 million subscribers as of January 2019. The company’s YouTube team consists of 13 people at the T-Series headquarters. The company’s main T-Series channel on YouTube primarily shows music videos as well as film trailers.

Most viewed YouTube channel

T-Series channel was made in 2006. Till 2016, the channel had about 20M subs. But the big thing happened in 2016(end).

A telecom company(sim-card) called “JIO” emerged in India and to gain the user base, it started providing FREE UNLIMITED 4G INTERNET to the users. Yes you read that right, free unlimited high-speed mobile data. As a result, millions of people switched to JIO(seriously, who doesn’t like free stuff?) Even people from rural parts of India got access to the internet, which was also powered by the introduction of cheap but high specs Chinese smartphones like MI in the Indian market. This boosted the Indian YouTube scenario, 100s of new YouTubers emerged and the growth rate of the channels in terms of subs increased. As Indians love music, and T-Series being the most popular channel for Indian music, they got poured with millions of subs.

What is D-Company and why did they assassinate Gulshan Kumar?

D-Company is the name given to the organised crime group controlled by Dawood Ibrahim, with its origin in the city of Mumbai. It has been argued that the D-Company is not a stereotypical organised crime cartel in the strict sense of the word, but rather a collusion of criminal and Islamic terrorist groups based around Dawood Ibrahim’s personal control and leadership. Dawood Ibrahim is currently on the wanted list of Interpol for cheating, criminal conspiracy and running an organised crime syndicate.

Gulshan Kumar Dua lost his life in a shooting outside the Jeeteshwar Mahadev Mandir, a Hindu mandir dedicated to Lord Shiva of which he attended daily in Jeet Nagar, Andheri West suburb of Mumbai, on 12 August 1997. He was shot 16 times by D-Company. The police also accused film composer Nadeem Saifi of the music duo Nadeem-Shravan of having paid for the murder due to a personal dispute and fled the country after the murder. However, on 9 January 2001, Abdul Rauf Merchant (known as “Raja”) confessed to being the murderer.