He could not afford MSc fees. Now earns Rs 11 lakh every month

It’s the kind of financial swing that sounds implausible until you look at the numbers Kumar himself laid out during an interview with indianexpress.com.

Career detour hits finances

Kumar’s money troubles began when a career detour derailed his finances. After finishing his BSc, he wanted to pursue an MSc, but the college he wanted charged an annual fee of Rs 2-3 lakh. “That was more than my whole family’s earnings,” he told indianexpress.com. That door closed and Kumar took a banking job instead, earning what he claimed was Rs 80,000-90,000 a month with incentives. However, that solid income lasted only about a year.

That income paid for his elder sister’s wedding but it also left him holding a Rs 7 lakh loan, according to indianexpress.com. Food delivery became the way to chip away at it, monsoon season and all, until a road accident took even that away.

Rs 20,000 to Rs 11 lakh

It was while recovering from his injuries and hunting for work-from-home options that Kumar found a writers’ listing at audio-storytelling platform Pocket FM. His entry into the gig was inauspicious on the money front; his first story, “Maanav aur Daanav”, earned him nothing. “My struggle began. I was so obsessed with writing stories that I once wrote as many as 20,000 words in a single day,” indianexpress.com reported.

His first real paycheque was Rs 20,000, which he said he handed straight to his mother rather than keeping for himself. The next one nearly tripled that, coming in at Rs 52,000. Then the numbers began climbing fast: one month brought in Rs 6.29 lakh and Kumar’s most recent monthly payout crossed Rs 11 lakh, he told indianexpress.com.

Add it all up and Kumar said he has pocketed roughly Rs 40-45 lakh in just the first six months of 2026 and he’s betting the full-year figure will cross Rs 1 crore, according to indianexpress.com.

What’s driving the payday

The financial turnaround is tied directly to the show that made him, called ‘Brahmyodha: The Destroyer’, a mythology-inspired series Kumar writes and leads. It has now crossed 16.8 crore plays, stretched past 1,300 episodes and saw its listenership quadruple this year alone, according to the indianexpress.com report. On a platform where writers’ pay is often linked to listenership and engagement, that kind of growth curve explains why Kumar’s payouts have scaled the way they have.

It’s also a reminder of how the audio-content boom in India has quietly created a new category of high earners, writers, not actors or hosts, sitting at the top of the payout chart on apps like Pocket FM.

How does Pocket FM pay its creators?

Pocket FM’s creator economy runs on two connected layers; one, how the platform itself makes money, and two, how it splits a slice of that with writers.

The platform runs on a freemium, microtransaction model rather than a flat subscription. Users get some free access but premium episodes require payment or a subscription, with pricing varying by market, language and content tier, combining ad-supported listening with paid unlock options.

Users buy “Coins” to unlock episodes early or beyond a daily free limit. Users receive 15 minutes of free daily content with an option to purchase additional listening time through coin packages and this microtransaction engine now accounts for about 85% of Pocket FM’s total revenue.

How writers get paid

Pocket FM’s formal payment channel for writers is the Writer’s Benefit Program (WBP). It has two components, namely revenue share and bonuses.

According to the FAQs on the website’s creator portal, a minimum of 20% of the revenue earned from readers’ coin expenditure on a series flows back to the author. Some third-party breakdowns put top-tier writers closer to a 25% share once a series performs well.

On top of revenue share, accepted writers can earn a New Series Bonus for launching a new story, a Monthly Throughput Bonus tied to consistent output and a Completion Bonus for finishing a full series.