The roar of a successful creator often hides a whisper of struggle that most never hear. For Ushank Ghai, the co-founder of ‘Science and Fun’ and a leading voice in India’s educational creator economy, that whisper was literal.
Today, he stands as a premier math and accounts educator, steering a digital empire with over six million subscribers on his primary channel and another million on his secondary platforms, yet his journey began in a place of profound silence.
The origin of this edtech powerhouse is rooted in the narrow lanes of Rohini, Delhi. After losing his father at the age of three, Ghai witnessed his mother’s relentless grit as she sold shampoo and cosmetics door-to-door to keep the family afloat.
By the eighth standard, Ghai and his younger brother, Ashu, joined the hustle, making bangles and selling kitchen scrubbers in weekly markets to contribute to the household.
The pivot toward teaching happened by accident when a neighbour noticed Ghai tutoring his brother in math. She offered him 600 rupees a month to teach her daughters, a sum that felt monumental at the time.
However, a significant barrier stood in his way: a severe stutter that made even saying his own name an agonizing task. Early on, prospective students would walk out of trial classes, citing his speech impediment as a dealbreaker.
Rather than retreating, Ghai treated his stutter as a technical challenge to be solved. He developed a “substitution strategy,” swapping words he struggled to pronounce with synonyms, using “color” instead of “rang” or vice versa, to maintain a seamless flow.
This adaptability, combined with a “friend-first” teaching philosophy, allowed him to build OSR Academy in a dilapidated, shuttered shop in 2008, where the inauguration happened by the light of a borrowed bulb because they lacked electricity.
The true growth arc occurred when the brothers integrated experiments into their pedagogy. While Ushank handled the commerce side, his brother Ashu Ghai became a viral sensation by performing live science experiments, like exploding hydrogen balloons, which resonated deeply with a generation tired of rote learning. This authenticity eventually fueled their transition to YouTube during the 2020 pandemic.
What started as raw footage of classroom experiments posted to YouTube Shorts quickly exploded, with videos garnering 50 to 100 million views. This viral momentum transformed Science and Fun into one of the fastest-growing tech-education channels globally.
Despite lucrative “hefty amount” buyout offers from major educational corporations, the brothers chose to remain independent, launching their own dedicated app to provide affordable live classes to lakhs of students.
Today, Ushank Ghai’s operation is a multi-platform juggernaut, spanning YouTube, Instagram, and a proprietary app.
His story serves as a blueprint for the modern Indian creator: it is not just about the content, but the resilience to stay the course when the world, and even your own voice, seems to be against you.
