Jay Shetty

Jay Shetty is the monk who became a media mogul: the British-Indian creator whose three years as a Vedic monk became the origin story for one of the biggest wellness brands on the planet. The parables he posts — calm, earnest, distilled from ancient wisdom — have made him the internet’s most-quoted voice on purpose, love, and the examined life.

The setup reads like a script. Born September 6, 1987, in London and raised by Indian parents, Shetty was a business student at Cass Business School when a last-minute invitation to hear the monk Gauranga Das lecture changed everything. The lecture sparked what he describes as a spiritual awakening; he traded the business-school track for the ashram, spending roughly three years immersed in Vedic tradition — a period he has described as time lived between India and England — waking before sunrise, meditating for hours, studying ancient texts with almost nothing to his name.

That renunciation became the product. When Shetty returned to the modern world and started posting short motivational videos in 2016, first through HuffPost and then on his own channels, the monk backstory was the differentiator: this wasn’t influencer philosophy, it was lived discipline, translated. The videos — parables and life lessons delivered with calm authority — racked up billions of views and tens of millions of followers. The ancient texts, applied to modern anxiety: the formula was obvious in retrospect, but nobody else had the origin story to sell it.

On Purpose, launched in 2019, scaled the intimacy. Long-form conversations where A-list guests drop the persona and talk meaning: Kobe Bryant, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, President Joe Biden, Emma Watson, Selena Gomez, Will Smith, Tom Holland, Kim Kardashian, Tom Hanks, Bill Gates, Khloé Kardashian. More than 800 episodes and over a billion listens later, it is regularly one of the most-listened-to health and wellness podcasts in the United States — number 24 on Spotify’s overall U.S. podcast ranking in 2025, and a consistent top-five Apple health-and-fitness title with a reported 35 million monthly downloads.

The interview craft is the vehicle: the calm, the patience, the questions that go one level deeper than the press circuit. Celebrities open up because the space feels safe. The ancient wisdom gives the conversations weight; the fame of the guests gives them reach. Shetty officiated Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s 2023 wedding; later that year he was invited to the White House to interview President Biden about mental health. Will Smith has called him a “dear, dear spiritual brother and friend.”

The business of wisdom is where the story gets staggering. Three years on iHeartMedia’s podcast network, starting in 2023, reportedly doubled both his audience and his revenue — and when the partnership ended in June 2026 over renewal terms, a bidding war broke out. Netflix and Spotify prevailed with a joint exclusive deal reported at roughly $100 million, pulling new On Purpose episodes off YouTube entirely: video lives on Netflix, audio on Spotify. YouTube’s dedicated podcast channel, built to 5.6 million subscribers and some 15 million monthly views, went dark on new uploads overnight.

The empire extends past the mic. Think Like a Monk (2020) was a number-one New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller; he followed it with 8 Rules of Love. He co-founded Sama Tea, holds a stake in the National Women’s Soccer League’s Angel City FC, took On Purpose on a 15-city North American live tour in 2025, and was named Kenneth Cole’s first Purposeful Voices menswear ambassador for Fall 2025. Forbes put him on its 30 Under 30 list in 2017; the Streamys named him Best Health & Wellness Creator in 2018 and 2019; AdWeek made him a Young Influentials cover star; TIME named him to its 100 Creators list in 2025.

The audience is enormous and unusually devoted: roughly 70 million followers across platforms as of late 2026 — about 31 million on Facebook, 18.5 million on Instagram, 6.4 million on TikTok, and more than 10 million across his YouTube channels. His videos have been viewed over eight billion times. Wife Radhi Devlukia Shetty, a plant-based chef and author in her own right, is a fixture of the brand’s domestic-goddess side; the couple’s Los Angeles life is the aspirational endpoint of the philosophy.

The origin story, though, has faced serious scrutiny. A March 2024 Guardian investigation raised questions about the consistency of the monk narrative — associates described a London life of viral videos and travel during the years in question, and the institutions named in Think Like a Monk told reporters they had no record of the claimed associations. The investigation also revived a 2019 callout by YouTuber Nicole Arbour, who accused Shetty of building his early following by reposting others’ content without credit — after which Shetty removed more than 100 posts. Shetty has said he has “always been open and honest” about his monk years, and his lawyers disputed the reporting.

The tension is the story: can someone authentically teach detachment while building a media empire? The audience, so far, has decided the wisdom works regardless of who repackaged it. From ashram to airwaves, from monk’s robes to the $100 million deal table, Jay Shetty’s arc is the wellness era’s defining narrative — ancient wisdom, modern distribution, and tens of millions of people searching for purpose, ready to be told where to find it.