Pratik Gandhi

He graduated in industrial engineering from North Maharashtra University in Jalgaon in 2004, spent three years with the National Productivity Council in Satara and Pune, and joined the cement division of Reliance Infrastructure in Mumbai in January 2008. He stayed there until 2016. That is eight years of a salary arriving on time while he did the other thing at night.

The other thing was not light. His first credited play, Aa Paar Ke Pele Paar, was in 2005. By 2007 he was playing six characters in a single production, Apurva Avsar, and by 2013 he was playing seven in Ame Badha Sathe To Duniya Laiye Mathe. He also carried Hu Chandrakant Bakshi that year, a solo turn as the Gujarati writer who spent his career picking fights. None of this was hobby theatre. It was a full second career being run in the hours the first one left over.

His first two screen credits were an English film in 2006 and a Hindi one in 2007, both small, and then nothing for seven years. The career actually starts with Bey Yaar in 2014, Abhishek Jain's film about two friends and a painting, where he played Tapan. It ran fifty weeks and became the first Gujarati film the New York Indian Film Festival ever hosted.

Two years later came Wrong Side Raju, directed by Mikhil Musale and built on a real Ahmedabad hit and run case from 2013. Gandhi played Raju Bambani, a driver by day and a bootlegger at night, and the film won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Gujarati at the 64th National Film Awards. He left the salaried job the same year. Love Ni Bhavai followed in 2017 and Ventilator in 2018. Four Gujarati films, one National Award, and not a single Hindi favour called in.

Hansal Mehta had spent three years on a 550 page script about the 1992 securities scam. Mukesh Chhabra had roughly 150 characters to fill. For the one that mattered, the choice was a Gujarati theatre actor almost nobody outside Gujarat had heard of. Gandhi put on eighteen kilograms, shot across 200 locations in Mumbai in eighty five days, and Scam 1992 premiered on SonyLIV on 9 October 2020.

It became the most viewed series on the platform. At the 2021 Filmfare OTT Awards it took a leading fourteen nominations and won eleven, including Best Actor in a Drama Series for Gandhi. What is worth noticing is what he did with the year after. Instead of taking the obvious Hindi haul, he did Vitthal Teedi, a Gujarati web series, in 2021. Most actors treat regional work as the ladder. He kept treating it as the house.

In 2015 he played Mohandas Gandhi in Mohan No Masalo, a Gujarati stage production, and performed the monologue in Gujarati, Hindi and English on the same day. It was a small play with a specific audience. In May 2022 Hansal Mehta cast him as Gandhi again, this time for a three season biographical series produced by Applause Entertainment from Ramachandra Guha's two volume life, with A. R. Rahman writing the music and filming done in Gujarati, Hindi and English for authenticity.

Season one runs eight hour long episodes covering the first forty five years, including the twenty three in South Africa. It had its world premiere in the Primetime programme at the Toronto International Film Festival on 17 September 2025, with his wife Bhamini Oza playing Kasturba. The line from a Gujarati stage monologue to a Toronto premiere is exactly ten years long, and it never once passed through the usual gate.

The Hindi work arrived in volume only after the Gujarati work had already made the argument. Bhavai came in 2021, Atithi Bhooto Bhava and Kahani Rubberband Ki in 2022, then a heavy 2024 with Madgaon Express, Do Aur Do Pyaar, Dedh Bigha Zameen and Agni. Dhoom Dhaam and Phule followed in 2025, along with the Netflix series Saare Jahan Se Accha.

He kept the Gujarati column open through all of it, with Kehvatlal Parivar and Vaahlam Jaao Ne in 2022. The pattern is consistent enough to be a policy rather than a coincidence. He is the clearest working proof that a Gujarati actor does not have to be discovered by Hindi cinema to matter to it.