Dhruv Rathee

Dhruv Rathee (born 8 October 1994, ) is an Indian influencer and activist. He is known for his YouTube videos on social, political and environmental issues. As of 24 May 2026, he has over 40 million subscribers and 8 billion views across his YouTube channels, along with 18 million followers on Instagram, 3.2 million followers on X and 6.6 million followers on Facebook.

Early life and education Dhruv Rathee was born on 8 October 1994 into a Haryanvi Hindu Jat family in the Indian state of Haryana. He completed his primary education in Haryana before pursuing higher education in Germany, earning a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in renewable energy from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Career Rathee is mostly known for his political videos, which primarily contain fact-checking and explanatory content. According to ThePrint, Rathee was one of the first Indian users to use YouTube as a political platform. He began uploading travel videos in 2013, but by the end of the year, he shifted his focus towards political and social topics.

Alongside his serious content, Rathee launched Pee News, a satirical "fake news" segment. Additionally, from 2017 until early 2020, Rathee wrote opinion columns for ThePrint.

In July 2020, Rathee began another YouTube channel called Dhruv Rathee Vlogs, where he shares his international travel vlogs. In addition to his vlogs, Rathee hosts various shows, including DW Travel of Deutsche Welle and Decode with Dhruv of Netflix India. He also hosts a podcast on Spotify called Maha Bharat with Dhruv Rathee.

, Rathee has a YouTube Shorts channel to share 30-seconds fact videos, offering a quick and accessible way for viewers to engage with the information he presents. On 18 April 2024, Rathee announced five new YouTube channels focusing on publishing dubbed videos in five Indian regional languages: Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, and Kannada.

In September 2022, he faced controversy when a video he posted about Pakistan's political crisis was blocked by India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for including a map of India that does not align with India's national position on Kashmir. Following the 2025 Pahalgam attack, Rathee was the subject of backlash when Pakistani news channels aired clips of his video which criticised the Indian government's security failures; Rathee claimed that the clips were misused.

In March 2023, Rathee faced copyright charges from Dabur on his video titled "The dark-side of cold drinks". The Calcutta High Court ordered social media platforms to remove the video.

In October 2023, Rathee was included in Time's list of Next Generation Leaders.

In May 2025, Rathee faced controversy from the Sikh community for posting an AI-generated thumbnail in a new video, titled "The Rise of Sikhs", which primarily focused on the first Sikh ruler, Banda Singh Bahadur. The video received widespread condemnation from the Sikh community, including the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee President, for depicting AI-generated visuals of Sikh gurus. Following the backlash, Rathee removed the video from his YouTube channel.

Personal life Rathee resides in Germany. In November 2021, he married his long-time partner Juli Lbr at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, Austria. Their first child was born in September 2024.