ChuChu TV

ChuChu TV's founder, CEO, and director—Vinoth Chandar—posted the channel's first video on YouTube, basing the main character ChuChu on his then-three-year-old daughter. The video, based on "Chubby Cheeks", received over three hundred thousand views in two weeks. After the video's success, Chandar decided to invest in his channel and convinced his partners Krishnan, Ajith Togo, Subbiramanian, and Suresh to join the team.

The videos feature a relatively bright art style, with cute characters dancing, singing, playing and playing out what the lyrics describe, under intricate music with Bollywood-esque[2] song structures, including multiple riffs used between verses. The originals, like other edutainment channels, often use, partly or wholly, the melodies of existing nursery rhymes, though there are exceptions. Unlike other edutainment channels, however, the songs often attempt to be "cool" musically, with powerful synth strings, soaring riffs, powerful beats and other elements.

In 2016, ChuChu TV announced a partnership with DreamTheatre for the purpose of licensing and merchandising.[3] Brokered by the latter company, in 2018, ChuChu TV linked a partnership with the Australian media company Moose Toys to make a line of figurines, dolls and plushes, planning to reveal them in the fall of 2019, with apparel, publishing and back-to-school ranges also planned for 2019.[4]

While the channel has gotten appraisal from parents and a large audience especially in the United States,[5][6] there has been consistent backlash against the channel, with at least 30 percent dislikes on a average ChuChu TV video. Vinoth Chandar has referred specifically to the "Johny Johny Yes Papa" compilation comments as "very hateful" and claims trolls "just don't understand that [their] content is for toddlers".[7] Parents had also reacted to a video with the lyric, "Shoot the numbers with the gun" and thus the company changed the lyric; Asian parents did not react to the line, since there is less gun violence in Asia. [8]

ChuChu TV has since been awarded Ten YouTube Silver Play Buttons, for gaining over 100,000 subscribers on its respective channels, six YouTube "Gold Play Buttons", for its channels gaining 1,000,000 subcribers and one Diamond Play Button, for surpassing 10 million subscribers on the main channel.[9][10] The brand has achieved 'Silver Play Button' for its 9 sub-channels, namely: Surprise, Spanish, Portuguese, Funzone, Storytime, French, Hindi, Tamil and Bangla. Also, their Spanish, Portuguese, Surprise, Hindi, Funzone, and Nursery Rhymes channels received a "Gold Play Button".[11][12]