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Dubai: Amitabh Bachchan has once again raised the question of stepping back from Kaun Banega Crorepati, writing in a blog post that some contestants’ stories leave him struggling to continue hosting.
The 83-year-old, currently fronting the show’s 18th season, wrote that certain personal histories shared on the hot seat are difficult to hear without losing his composure, and added the line “I wish to retire now.”
Whether that means anything beyond emotional exhaustion is genuinely unclear, and there’s a pattern worth knowing before reading too much into it. In August, an almost identical line in his blog turned out to simply mean he was heading to bed after a 24-hour shoot. The same retirement rumour did the rounds ahead of season 17 in 2025 too, and proved false when Sony released promotional material with him still hosting.
He has fronted every season since KBC began in 2000, with one exception. Season three in 2007 was hosted by Shah Rukh Khan while Bachchan was occupied elsewhere.
With his future on the show a live question again, it’s worth looking at what actually happened to the people the show made crorepatis, because in 25 years, remarkably few contestants have ever reached the top prize.
Harshvardhan Nawathe, Season 1, 2000
The first person to ever win the top prize on Indian television, taking home Rs 1 crore at the age of 27.
Nawathe has said he wasn’t prepared for the win or what followed. He went on to complete an MBA at a UK university, moved into the corporate world, and now leads corporate social responsibility work for various organisations. “What the KBC win gave me was a net to build my life,” he said in a later interview. He returned to the KBC set for the show’s 25th anniversary special last year, sitting on the panel alongside Bachchan once again.
Rahat Taslim, Season 4, 2010
Taslim earned her living stitching clothes for people in her local area in Jharkhand before winning Rs 1 crore. She didn’t even have a bank account at the time.
She used the winnings to build a three-storey house and open her own garment showroom, converting a trade she already knew into a business she owned outright.
Sushil Kumar and Anil Kumar Sinha, Season 5, 2011
Two very different outcomes from the same season, both from Bihar.
Sushil Kumar’s story is the one most associated with KBC, and it’s often compared to Slumdog Millionaire. He couldn’t afford a television set and watched the show at a neighbour’s house before winning Rs 5 crore, then a record sum. What followed has been widely reported as difficult, with several outlets describing poor investments, scams and later financial hardship. Kumar has spoken publicly about the difficulty of managing sudden wealth with no prior experience of it.
Anil Kumar Sinha, a banker who won Rs 1 crore the same season, took a steadier path. He opened a coaching institute in Patna to help other aspirants prepare for the show, having originally set it up to help candidates with government job exams before demand shifted almost entirely toward KBC coaching. “Their demand for KBC coaching just stunned me,” he said at the time.
Sunmeet Kaur Sawhney, Season 6, 2012
A home tutor originally from Chandigarh, living in Mumbai, Sawhney won Rs 5 crore and said she didn’t believe it until Bachchan came over and hugged her. Married to an actor who had worked in small film roles, she said at the time that part of the money would go toward sponsoring Punjabi religious rituals.
Achin and Sarthak Narula, Season 8, 2014
The only pair to ever win KBC’s absolute top prize. The Delhi brothers took the full Rs 7 crore, becoming India’s first and, to date, only Maha Crorepati.
Their reason for playing gives the win its weight. They were competing to fund treatment for their mother’s ovarian cancer, and Bachchan singled this out at the time. “What a joy to see a 28-year-old and his younger brother, 23, playing to gather some money to be able to put it into the cause of providing the fees required for the treatment of their mother,” he wrote on his blog. Sarthak later said his preparation for government job exams had helped him during the show, and that it was why his brother chose him as his playing partner over their father.
They now run a chain of tea cafés in the corporate sector.
Himani Bundela, Season 13, 2021
Bundela lost much of her vision in a motorbike accident in 2011. Ten years later, she became KBC’s first visually impaired crorepati, winning Rs 1 crore as a primary school teacher in Agra.
She chose not to attempt the Rs 7 crore question, deciding the money already won mattered more to her family than the risk. She has since used the winnings to work toward an inclusive coaching centre for differently-abled students, and was later honoured by the Uttar Pradesh chief minister. “It felt like Diwali had lasted for three months at our home,” she told Bachchan on a later special.
What the record shows
Across 25 years, only a handful of contestants have won the top prize outright, and the Narula brothers remain the only ones to have taken the full jackpot since it rose to Rs 7 crore. Most seasons produce contestants who leave with smaller amounts along the way rather than reaching the final question at all.
What the winners’ later lives show isn’t a single pattern. Some, like Nawathe, Taslim and Sinha, turned the money into stable, workable second acts. Others, like the Narula brothers and Bundela, used it to solve a specific crisis or fund a cause tied to why they’d entered in the first place. And at least one, Sushil Kumar, has found that winning a fortune and knowing what to do with it are two entirely different skills.
Where Bachchan stands now
For now, KBC 18 continues with Bachchan in the host’s chair. Sony Entertainment Television hasn’t commented on his latest blog post, and no official statement on his future has followed either of his two previous “retirement” scares.
Given the show has already survived one full host change and multiple false alarms about his departure, this one may be worth treating the same way until Sony says otherwise.
