Born on 19 November 1965 in Mumbai, to an Awadhi-speaking family from Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh, Dayashankar Pandey began his film career with Pehla Nasha in 1993. He went on to appear in Lagaan, Gangaajal, Swades and Raajneeti before becoming widely known as Inspector Chalu Pandey in Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah, where he also serves as creative consultant.

He has been with Ideas Unlimited across three productions and three registers. He played Saadat Hasan Manto in Mareez, the company's long-running play on the Gujarati poet, from 2004. In Bhamasha he took the title role, spending weeks on the Rajasthani dialect to inhabit the 16th-century Jain treasurer who emptied his own vaults for Maharana Pratap. And in Popcorn with Parsai, which opened at the NCPA in December 2014, he held a bare stage on his own for a little over an hour as the Hindi satirist Harishankar Parsai, with a popcorn cart for a set and no other actor to play against. He told Mumbai Theatre Guide that the production ran forty-eight housefull shows and that it was “a dream role for any actor” — a one-person show in which he had to hold the room “with my energy, voice and magnetic stage presence”. He has said since that he wants to bring it back.