The Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi jingle is all set to echo in Indian households again as the popular TV show is making a comeback on Star Plus and JioHotstar with a season 2 on July 29, 2025.
Kyunki, as it was popularly known, first aired 25 years ago on July 3, 2000, on Star Plus. It ran for eight years, topping TRP charts for seven, finally concluding in the year 2008.
What it was?
The TV show followed the Viranis, a wealthy Gujarati industrialist family, into which the protagonist, Tulsi, marries. For eight years, the audience keenly witnessed Tulsi’s journey from a timid daughter-in-law to the family matriarch. The show aired at 10:30 PM on weekdays, a time slot it will reprise in season 2, but for all seven days of the week.
Speaking to AajTak, actor-politician Smriti Irani reminisced about the first time she assumed the role of Tulsi Virani, "I still remember when we first started working on the show; we were about 120-150 people. None of us owned a house or a car. We all laid the financial foundation of our lives through Kyunki".
What it will be?
Ektaa Kapoor will once again produce the show under Balaji Telefilms. Interestingly, the reboot announcement comes after Balaji declared that it will reverse its business pyramid, focusing more on movies, followed by digital platforms, with television taking a backseat. Earlier, television was the mainstay of the media company.
According to its FY25 report, Balaji saw a 27.5% drop in its revenue, which plummeted from Rs. 625 crores to Rs. 453 crores from the last fiscal year. However, its net profit increased from Rs. 19.4 crore to Rs. 84.6 crore for the same period due to licensing fees and digital content rights.
As per NDTV Movies, unlike its 1840-episode long run in season 1, season 2 of Kyunki is expected to be only about 150 episodes.
At the India Global Forum in April 2025, Ekta Kapoor explicitly stated her desire to revive the show to achieve the 2000-episode milestone. She said, “I'm re-making the biggest show I ever made... because the programme ended 160 episodes less before it completed its big 2000 (milestone).
For its more finite reboot, the TV show will stream on JioHotstar, which is treating Kyunki 2.0 as a cross-generational event. “For older audiences, it brings back the comfort and nostalgia of iconic characters like Tulsi, who were once part of their daily lives. For younger, digitally native viewers, it offers a modern lens on themes they care about like family dynamics, parenting, relationships, identity, and emotional complexity, delivered in a high-quality, cinematic format,” noted a spokesperson from JioHotstar.
"TV has changed over the years, in terms of making shows as well as audiences’ mobile-first viewing habits, and the pressure to recreate a loved series and make it succeed is going to be much higher", said Mitesh Shah, speaking to afaqs! He is a screenwriter and film producer who was also involved in the screenwriting process of Kyunki back in the 2000s.
"I feel they are going to tackle more topical issues, stories that engage with current viewers, married to a certain sense of simplicity that ‘Kyunki’ first started with in its initial episodes", he added more specifically.
Shah also assures the audience and advertisers that "Rajubhai (Rajesh Joshi), who was one of the original writers of the show, is also leading the writing team this time around, with younger people in the team. His sense of emotion and drama that a TV show in India requires is bang on. I have worked closely with both Ekta as well as Rajubhai and I know how much hard work they both put in when it comes to Kyunki".
Advertisers' interest
The Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhu Bahu Thi 2 poster not only reveals the show’s new look but also advertisers' confidence in it, displaying P&G Tide as the presenting sponsor, Fortune Refined Soyabean Oil and Colgate as co-powered TV sponsors. While not on the poster, Fortune Chakki Atta has also secured the co-powered digital streaming sponsorship. Overall, Kyunki has 13 sponsorship slots open to advertisers.
Mr. Arjun Bhatia, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Matrimony.com Limited, also expressed interest in associating with Kyunki. He said, “Both platforms celebrate Indian family values and the importance of marriage. This collaboration could help us connect with families who appreciate tradition and are seeking meaningful relationships for their children”.
According to Bhatia, other family-led brand categories like jewellery, automobile, BSFI (Banking, Financial Services, Insurance) and real estate could show similar interest in the show.
“Yes, of course”, was the response Dabur’s Head of Media, Rajiv Dubey, gave afaqs! when asked about the brand’s interest in Kyunki. Since Dabur targets women for all its communications, Kyunki has the potential to give the brand maximum visibility.
Also weighing in on the topic of advertisers’ interest, Krishna Rao Buddha, marketing specialist (former Senior Category Head, Marketing Parle), compares the Kyunki reboot with the re-runs of Mahabharata and Ramayana on linear TV during the COVID-19 pandemic. He attested, “those re-runs were supported with a lot of high interest, especially by advertisers”.
Since a lot of women watched Kyunki’s first season when they were “15-20-25 years old”, now they must be over the age of 40, either as “working women or as housewives” with spending capacity. Hence, according to Buddha, brands that target women would be more interested.
Hindustan Unilever, Imami, Godrej, Parle, Britannia, ITC, Dabur and Marico are all potential advertisers for Kyunki as per Buddha’s estimate.
However, since the festive season is also beginning with the arrival of Raksha Bandhan, he clarifies that the brand's interest will not be limited to the FMCG category. While traditional brands like FMCG and automobiles may show more interest, even e-commerce and quick commerce brands will be eager to advertise on the show.
Tempering expectations
Buddha, however, proceeds with a word of caution, ”during the pandemic, there was no new content” that the re-runs may have had to compete with, which will not be the case with the reboot of Kyunki. So the jury on how the audience will receive the show is still out.
“It is not unprecedented for a TV station to try to revive an old asset”, explains Paritosh Joshi, Principal at Provocateur Advisory, an independent media & communications consultancy practice.
He draws parallels with the "Bournvita Quiz Contest", which has seen "various iterations" since the early 70s, well into the 21st century, from radio to YouTube.
Joshi also contrasts Kyunki with the "middle class" shows he grew up on, like Hamlog or Nukkad, which "appealed to the sort of gareeb India".
Kyunki, alongside Kaun Banega Crorepati and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki (which he remembers as a "wonderful trifecta"), marked a significant shift from middle-class India to the “post-liberalisation India, where aspiration for all the good things of life was brought to TV," he remarks.
Characters "walking around in what you would now recognise as Manyavar and Mohey at all times," catering to "a burgeoning middle class which wanted to spend money and wanted to look glamorous" was new in the early 2000s, but not anymore.
While Kyunki generated "water cooler conversations" in an era of fewer channels and communal family viewing, Joshi acknowledges that these "advantages have now faded into the background" due to fragmented viewership with the ubiquity of mobile devices. Nevertheless, he considers the reboot to be a fair experimental opportunity for the channel.
The reboot gamble
Joshi may be on to something. Kyunki isn’t the first legacy IP to make a comeback with a shared TV-OTT platform. Other properties like Sarabhai vs Sarabhai (original: 2004, reboot: 2017), Khichdi (original: 2002, reboot: 2018), Hum Paanch (original: 1995, reboot: 2005), Office Office (original: 2001, reboot: 2006), CID (original: 1998, reboot: 2024) and Bade Acche Lagte Hain (original: 2011, reboot: 2021 and 2025) have also rebooted, however, most to lukewarm responses.
Matcha lattes, labubu dolls and micro-dramas may be the staples of pop culture in 2025, but Kyunki comprised the original pop culture of India, popularising the ‘saas-bahu’ genre that dominated almost every Indian household. Hence, it remains to be seen whether the nostalgia cheat code works for the property or signals creative bankruptcy for the media industry.
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