General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Kaun Banegi Shikharwati

Kaun Banegi Shikharwati (कौन बनेगी शिखरवती) is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language comedy-drama web series in which a broke former king devises a contest among his four estranged daughters to reunite his family while an income tax investigation threatens his palace. It premiered on ZEE5 on 7 January 2022 with ten episodes.¹

Key fact	Detail
Platform and premiere	ZEE5 original, released 7 January 2022, all ten episodes on that date¹
Genre and language	Comedy and drama, in Hindi, with English subtitles¹
Creators	Written by Ananya Banerjee, co-directed by Banerjee and Gauravv K Chawla²
Lead cast	Naseeruddin Shah as Raja Mrityunjay Singh Shikharwat, with Lara Dutta, Soha Ali Khan, Kritika Kamra, and Anya Singh as his four daughters³
Central premise	The king owes Rs 320 million (Rs 32 crores) in unpaid wealth tax and stages the Navrasa Royal Games to name an heiress and reunite his daughters⁴
Episode length	Roughly 30 to 46 minutes per episode; TheTVDB lists an average runtime of 33 minutes⁵
Reception	IMDb 6.0/10 from 578 user votes; critic ratings ranged from 1.5/5 (Indian Express) to 3.5/5 (Times of India)⁶^•⁷^•⁴

Spoilers

Premise and plot

Raja Mrityunjay Singh Shikharwat, the lonely sovereign of the fading kingdom of Shikharwati, owes the government Rs 320 million (Rs 32 crores) in wealth tax that he cannot pay, and the palace risks being auctioned if the amount is not settled.⁴^•⁸ After a government notice, his right-hand man Mishraji devises a plan to reunite the king's four estranged daughters, Devyani, Gayatri, Kamini, and Uma.¹

The king puts his daughters through a series of farcical contests, the Navrasa Royal Games, built on the nav rasas, the nine classical emotions of Indian aesthetics, to prove themselves worthy successors.⁹ The games include a cooking challenge, a stage play that Devyani turns into a roast of the king, a horror night built on a shared fear of darkness, and a round based on the four elements of nature.¹ In the final episode, Uma has an allergy attack, the sisters unite, and the income tax officer Roop Singh arrives to raid the palace just as the king announces his decision.¹

Cast and characters

Naseeruddin Shah plays Raja Mrityunjay Singh Shikharwat, and Raghubir Yadav plays Mishraji, the king's principal troubleshooter.³^•¹⁰ The four daughters are Devyani Shikharwat Goel (Lara Dutta), a perfectionist housewife under threat from a Dubai don; Kamini Shikharwat (Kritika Kamra), a directionless social media influencer; Gayatri Shikharwat (Soha Ali Khan), a yogini and dancer living in isolation; and Uma Shikharwat (Anya Singh), a video-game designer with a debilitating allergy.⁹ The supporting cast includes Cyrus Sahukar as Harsh Goel, Varun Thakur as the tax officer Roop Singh, and Anurag Sinha as Veer Singh.³

Production

The series was written by Ananya Banerjee, who co-directed it with Gauravv K Chawla, and was produced by Applause Entertainment, Emmay Entertainment, and Zee5.² It was Zee5's first web series offering of 2022.² Reviewers noted a visual style with a "wannabe Wes Anderson vibe," and the heiresses appear in matching green tracksuits at one point, an echo that led several critics to compare the contest format to Squid Game, though the series itself is a light-hearted dramedy rather than a survival thriller.¹¹^•⁴

Reception

Critical response was divided. The Times of India gave the season 3.5 out of 5, calling it a fun, breezy take on a dysfunctional royal family.⁴ NDTV rated it two and a half stars, describing a patchy dramedy that is agreeably flip even at its lowest ebb, and noted that Raghubir Yadav's Mishraji often runs away with the show.¹⁰ The Indian Express was the most negative, rating it 1.5 out of 5 and calling it an aggressively tiresome show that undermines its serious themes with unending silliness.⁷ The Hindustan Times review argued that the daughters remain caricatures across the ten episodes and that the writing tests the viewer's patience over roughly 300 minutes.¹² Scroll.in took a middle position, finding the series frequently under-delivering but carried by its cast and some clever writing.²

On IMDb the series holds a 6.0/10 rating from 578 votes, with an unweighted mean of 6.8; episode-level ratings range from 5.2 for episode 8 to 7.6 for the finale.⁶^•¹³

Availability

In India the series streams with a subscription on ZEE5 and VI movies and tv, and free with ads on both services.³ It is also available through Airtel Xstream Play via ZEE5 on eligible Airtel plans.¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026