The Chu Chu Mantra: Here’s how one of YouTube's most successful channels made it big - ET BrandEquity

But there’s another Johny on YouTube who is sneakily eating sugar and just 387 million people have seen him so far. “I mean, my wife, my two kids and I, all sleep in the same bed,” he says, still a little shaken by the reactions to the video. Nevertheless, without skipping a second, Chandar and his co-founders - BM Krishnan , Subbiramanian TS , Ajith Togo and Suresh Bhoopathy - went back to the drawing board and gave the little sugar-addict his own private bedroom. “Chu Chu TV is one of the first in the space to actively engage with parents,” says Aman Dayal , content partnerships, YouTube Kids & Learning, South & South East Asia at Google. And it got there with just 161 videos uploaded since 2013.Over the past five years, the Chu Chu team, Chandar and the channel’s creative head Krishnan, all hard-core “IT guys” who found a second career as children’s song writers and animators, took traditional favourites (most of them have rather dark origins like wars, slavery and plagues) and rewrote them to reflect a positive outlook and a new world order. ‘Chubby Cheeks’, Chu Chu TV’s maiden video that got over 300,000 views in just two weeks, was rewritten to emphasise the importance of a lovable personality over fair and rosy cheeks. In the reboot of a numbers video a line about a toy gun was dropped after complaints poured in from parents in some western markets. The original video is still on air though because Asian parents seem not to mind a weapon popping up here and there in a pre-school rhyme. It ranks No1 in APAC and No2 worldwide in family entertainment and pre-school education category (based on number of subscribers). Chandar gladly obliges his daughter, even though she’s moved on from nursery rhymes.