23 August,2026 10:45 AM IST | Mumbai | Tanisha Banerjee
Pic/Istock
Oh, to write online simply because you want someone to read it. In an Internet increasingly designed around monetisation, algorithms, and personal brands, Indian writers are turning to Substack to write, publish, and find an audience.
The irony is that, for Indian writers, Substack isn't the easiest place to make money. Its paid subscription infrastructure is not made for Indian users, and the platform's monetisation model works better for those who write under a business. Yet, writers continue to arrive.
Mumbai-based physiotherapist and writer Suhail Shaikh publishes at @suhailstopit and has 34 subscribers. Money was never really the point. He had written since school, briefly stopped while studying medicine, and eventually found his way back to writing through the Bookstagram community. Substack, he says, was simply where everyone seemed to be.
Gopal MS and Suhail Shaikh
But what keeps him there isn't necessarily the size of his audience. "It gives my thoughts a structure," he says. Shaikh journals every day, but Substack allows him to take some of those thoughts and put them somewhere others can read them. Sometimes an essay does well; sometimes it doesn't. What matters are the two or three people who reliably read everything he writes.
"Even if they don't, you know that you have written something well," he says. Substack offers Shaikh a form of validation. "I can just be a writer here," he says, "I don't need to have columns in the New York Times or I don't need to have a book out to be a writer here." That freedom is precisely what makes Substack attractive to writers who aren't treating it as a business. For Shaikh, being unpaid is almost liberating. A paying subscriber, he feels, could create an obligation to produce something worth their money. Without that pressure, his Substack can remain what he calls a "filtered journal space".
Faiz Abdulla
Substack, however, is more archive and a professional calling card for the photographer and creative director Gopal MS, who writes as @MumbaiPaused with more than 1800 subscribers. Gopal has spent around two decades blogging and documenting Mumbai, through his photography project Mumbai Paused. He moved to Substack as social media changed and Instagram became increasingly focused on reels. Photography, he felt, was taking a back seat. "On Substack, I can have proper photos, like the whole Old Life magazines where I can tell deep stories and long-form stories, which is only possible on a blog," he says.
And unlike an algorithm-driven social feed, Substack gave him access to a community of people who actually wanted to read. The platform's audience, he says, spans age groups and includes communities of writers sharing assignments and supporting each other's work. For Gopal, then, writing and publishing online doesn't have to directly earn money to have professional value. "If I decided to leave advertising and pursue photography full-time, my Substack would already function as a body of work I could show prospective clients. I can use it as a kind of calling card," he says.
That distinction between making money from the work and using the work to eventually make money is important. As it is for author, businessman and poet Faiz Abdulla. He has 42 subscribers on @faizabdulla1. Substack was explicitly part of the marketing strategy for his philosophical fiction. Abdulla recently had his first novel, Agira, traditionally published and is now working on his third novel, while continuing to publish poetry and short stories.
He was advised that becoming an author today was also about building an audience and having a reach, besides obviously writing a book. Substack became one way to do that. "It just gave me an excuse or an outlet to put stuff out there," he says. The platform allowed him to build a small community and, crucially, gave prospective readers somewhere to encounter his writing before deciding whether they wanted to buy his book.
Substack also solved his problem of credentials. "I come from a business background with no formal education in writing or creative arts," he says. He wanted a way for people to assess his work for themselves. "I needed some credentials, some way for people to authenticate my work," he says. Substack provided that opportunity because readers could access his writing for free.
Yet, interestingly, even after getting the book deal, he hasn't turned Substack into a carefully managed promotional machine. If Instagram is where he sometimes thinks about catering to an audience, "On Substack, it's whole and soul, like an outlet for me to express myself."
The three writers arrive at the same platform from very different directions. None of them seem particularly interested in chasing the algorithm. That's the larger appeal of Substack in India. For these writers, being read is payment enough.
