"In my entire family, I was the first person to go to school, let alone college. I was always curious about English as a language and would observe TV anchors who presented news in English very keenly..." says Vashista Bhargav aka Vamshi Krishna, a spoken English YouTuber-turned-author from Warangal. The 32-year-old runs a popular YouTube channel called Vashista 360, and has now written a book – Spoken English Course - 45 Days Challenge – which is on the bestseller list on Amazon (over 65K copies sold). It’s no mean achievement, considering Vashista’s humble roots.
When he was in secondary school, Vashista – who hails from Narayanagiri village in Warangal – would rarely attend classes. Instead, he skipped school to work at his father’s cycle repair shop in order to make some money for his family. It was while working at the shop that Vashista took to reading, and started picking up English newspapers and used books that he found at scrap shops. During one such visit to a scrap shop, Vashista picked up an English-Telugu dictionary which pushed him further in his journey to learning English.
Vashista says his passion for the language came from his curiosity to learn different subjects. "While I was collecting old books, I got my hands on a 22-volume collection of books written by Dr BR Ambedkar, and that's when I realised how Ambedkar used his English. I decided that I would finish reading them all by the time I completed my college degree. I enjoyed his writing and as I went through each of the books, I found myself getting better and better. Over time, I became very fluent with the language, even to my teachers’ surprise," he says
He was preparing for the civil services exams while pursuing a Masters degree in Organic Chemistry at Osmania University. Vashista then started working as a teacher at different training institutes and taught English to over 20,000 aspirants in four years. After a few UPSC attempts, he continued teaching English, as well as other subjects for competitive exams, when he was introduced to online teaching. At this point, Vashista decided to embark on his journey as a YouTuber.
In May 2019, Vashsita started his channel "Vashista 360", which gained over 25,000 subscribers in less than a week. In under two years now, his subscriptions have gone up to over 620K – making it one of south India’s most popular education channels.
During the pandemic, Vashista was going through several books written for Telugu speakers to learn English. He then decided to write his own book, and provide good-quality and easy-to-follow material for aspiring English speakers.
"The book is aimed at helping Telugu speaking people from all walks of life, especially those who have studied in Telugu medium schools and come from rural backgrounds. I'm extremely happy to see the sale of the book at a rate I’d never expected. I post lessons for each day on YouTube which my readers can follow up with along with the books," says Vashista while speaking about the response to his book.
The writer says that over 65000 copies of his book have been sold so far. He decided to offer the book at a 50% discount to students from government schools and marginalised communities, in an effort to give back to society.
Vashista feels that no student should lose a chance due to a lack of resources. “All the achievers in the world have suffered a lot. Those who think that they can't, can actually do it. All that’s required is to put in an effort."