CarryMinati

Ajey Nagar, known as CarryMinati, started posting videos as a ten-year-old in Faridabad, found fame by mimicking a Bollywood star, and became the best-known individual YouTuber in India. His rapid-fire Hindi roasts made him a hero to millions of young Indians — and regularly brought him into conflict with the people and platforms he mocked.

Faridabad

Ajey Nagar was born on 12 June 1999 in Faridabad, an industrial city in Haryana near Delhi. He grew up in a middle-class family; his older brother, Yash, later became a music producer under the name Wily Frenzy and has worked on many of his tracks.

He was interested in computers and online videos from early childhood. In 2010, aged about ten, he started his first channel, posting videos of football tricks. They did not catch on. He tried other ideas, and later said that failure taught him to keep experimenting.

As his channel took more of his time, he struggled with school. He left regular schooling and completed his studies through open schooling, a decision his parents eventually supported.

The Borrowed Voice

His first real success came from gaming videos in which he played games while doing an impression of the actor Sunny Deol, famous for his booming voice and angry dialogue. The name “Carry Deol” stuck for a while, and then evolved into CarryMinati.

The impressions taught him comic timing. Gradually he dropped the borrowed voice and started talking in his own, in the fast, slangy Hindi of young north Indians.

The Roast

The format that made him famous was the roast: videos in which he watched and mocked other creators, viral trends, television shows and internet celebrities. They were fast, loud and often savage. For young viewers who felt Indian television was stiff and old-fashioned, they felt like someone finally speaking their language.

In January 2019, during the race between PewDiePie and the Indian music label T-Series to be the most-subscribed channel on YouTube, he released “Bye PewDiePie”, a diss track defending India’s side. It went viral well beyond India and introduced him to an international audience. That year TIME named him one of its Next Generation Leaders.

YouTube vs TikTok

In May 2020 he posted “YouTube vs TikTok: The End”, a roast of an Indian TikTok creator during an online feud between fans of the two platforms. It gathered likes at a record pace, becoming one of the most-liked non-music videos in India. Within days YouTube removed it for violating its policy on harassment and cyberbullying.

The removal made headlines across India and made him even more famous. He responded with “Yalgaar”, a rap track produced with his brother, which became one of his most-watched videos. A month later India banned TikTok, along with dozens of other Chinese apps, for unrelated reasons.

Streaming and Screen

His second channel, CarryisLive, is devoted to live gaming streams, which draw very large audiences in India. He appeared briefly in the 2022 Hindi film Runway 34, directed by and starring Ajay Devgn, and has worked with major brands as a sponsor and ambassador.

By January 2026 his main channel had more than 45 million subscribers, and his channels together around 60 million, making him one of the most-subscribed individual creators in India.

Controversies

Roasting other people carries risks. Several of his videos have been criticised as offensive, and he has faced complaints about language and jokes. In February 2026 a court in Mumbai, hearing a case brought by the filmmaker Karan Johar, restrained Nagar and his team from posting or circulating content that the court considered defamatory or objectionable towards Johar. The case concerned allegations about specific content; it was not a finding against his channel as a whole.

He has at times paused uploading for long periods, and has spoken about the pressure of fame arriving so young.

What He Changed

Before creators like CarryMinati, India’s biggest YouTube channels were mostly music labels and television companies. He was among those who proved that an individual, speaking everyday Hindi from a home in Faridabad, could reach an audience as large as a television network. A wave of Indian creators followed.

India’s YouTube Boom

His rise came at the same time as a transformation in how Indians use the internet. From 2016 the arrival of very cheap mobile data, led by Reliance Jio, brought hundreds of millions of people online for the first time, most of them on smartphones and many of them outside the big cities. They wanted entertainment in Hindi and other Indian languages, not English, and YouTube became one of the main places they found it.

India has since become YouTube’s largest market by number of users. CarryMinati was one of the first individual creators to show how big an audience that new wave of viewers could provide.

The measure of him is his voice. He began by borrowing a film star’s, and succeeded only when he found his own — loud, irreverent and unmistakably of his generation.

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