Akshay Kumar's Mogul: All you need to know about Gulshan Kumar
Akshay Kumar has been signed on to play the late music baron Gulshan Kumar in Mogul. Here's a look at the life of the T-series founder.
With the announcement that Akshay Kumar is all set to play music baron Gulshan Kumar in Mogul, fans are super excited. Akshay's first biopic, the film will be helmed by Jolly LLB 2 director Subhash Kapoor.
But before the actor brings alive the T-series founder's life on celluloid, we take a look at the man himself, Gulshan Kumar.
Gulshan Kumar was born in a Punjabi household as Gulshan Dua on May 5, 1951. His first brush with the music industry came at the age of 23, when he acquired a shop and began selling records and cheap audio cassettes. Finding it a profitable venture, Gulshan soon began producing cassettes (allegedly pirated) and started his venture, Super Cassettes Industries. The son of a fruit juice seller, he became a millionaire with the sale and export of audio cassettes, and soon moved to Mumbai.
His first tryst with Bollywood was Lal Dupatta Malmal Ka in 1989, which became a box office success because of its catchy songs. Aashiqui (1990) and Aamir Khan-starrer Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahi (1991) catapulted him into the big league. Gulshan Kumar is also credited for giving singers like Sonu Nigam, Anuradha Paudwal and Kumar Sanu their big break.
Gulshan was accused of exploiting the loopholes in the Indian Copyright Act and selling duplicate cassettes. He was quoted as telling Rediff, "Piracy? Aisi to koi baat hi nahin hain... Hamare business mein to ye sab chalta hain." Under his leadership, T-Series reportedly grew into a Rs 3,00,00,00,000 empire in 10 years.
A deeply religious man, Gulshan flooded the market with devotional songs and also established a bhandara which served free food to pilgrims visiting the shrine of Vaishno Devi.
In fact, it was at a temple that he was shot dead. On August 12, 1997, the founder of T-series, was murdered outside the Jeeteshwar Mahadev Mandir in Andheri. The 16 bullets pumped into his body sent shockwaves across the film industry.
Nadeem Saifee of composer duo Nadeem-Shravan was suspected to be behind the murder. Reportedly, he was not happy with Gulshan's marketing and publicity of his solo album, Hai Ajnabi, and held him as the reason for its failure. It was alleged that the composer was behind gangster Abu Salem calling up the music mogul and abusing him.
Shortly after, Gulshan started getting calls from the underworld, demanding Rs 10 crore as protection money. It was said that he was murdered for his refusal to pay the extortion money. Speculation was also rife that Nadeem, who fled to the United Kingdom and never returned, had hired the killers.