Puneet Krishna (Mirzapur Creator) – Age, Wife, Family, Education, Career & More

Puneet Krishna is an Indian screenwriter, lyricist and showrunner best known as the co-creator, showrunner and lead writer of Mirzapur, the Excel Entertainment crime saga that became Prime Video India’s biggest homegrown franchise. A metallurgical engineer from IIT-BHU who walked out of a comfortable corporate career at Coca-Cola to chase films, he is one of the most cited examples of a genuine “outsider” making it in the Hindi content industry — and, in 2026, the writer of Mirzapur: The Movie.

Bio/Wiki


Real Name	Puneet Krishna
Profession	Screenwriter, Showrunner, Creator, Lyricist
Famous For	Co-creating and showrunning Mirzapur (Prime Video); creating Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper (Netflix)
Debut	Film (writing): Bangistan (2015), as co-writer<br>Web series: Inside Edge (2017), as part of the writers’ room<br>As creator/showrunner: Mirzapur (2018)
Current Project	Mirzapur: The Movie — the big-screen prequel, written by him, directed by Gurmmeet Singh, releasing 4 September 2026 in Hindi and Telugu

Physical Stats & More


Height	Not Known
Eye Colour	Black
Hair Colour	Black

Personal Life


Date of Birth	Not Known
Age (as of 2026)	Approximately 50 years — he was described as 44 years old in October 2020 by The Hindu BusinessLine, placing his birth around 1976
Birthplace	Uttar Pradesh, India
Hometown	Meerut, Uttar Pradesh (he has referred to Meerut as his hometown); he grew up across roughly 12 towns in UP, including Bareilly, Badaun, Jaunpur and Varanasi, because of his father’s transferable job
Nationality	Indian
School	Various schools across Uttar Pradesh (Bareilly, Badaun, Jaunpur and others)
College/University	IIT (BHU) Varanasi — B.Tech in Metallurgical Engineering; followed by an MBA with dual specialisation in Finance and Marketing
Languages	Hindi, English, Urdu (his father made him learn Urdu as a child)
Zodiac Sign	Not Known
Religion	Not Known

Relationships & Family


Marital Status	Married
Wife	Name not publicly known. In interviews about his struggling years he has recalled that his pregnant wife had to travel by crowded buses during the period when he had no money and no work.
Children	Not publicly known
Parents	Father – a government/transferable-job employee who took the family across UP; he encouraged Puneet’s early poetry and had him learn Urdu<br>Mother – Not Known
Sibling	Brother – Vineet Krishna, also a screenwriter and his co-writer on Mirzapur

Career Snapshot

Year	Work	Role
Mid-2000s	Munna Bhai Chale Amerika (unmade) & ad films with Rajkumar Hirani	Assistant Director
Mid-2000s	Noora	Writer & lyricist (paid ₹18,000 for two months’ work)
2015	Bangistan	Co-writer (debut feature)
2017	Inside Edge (Prime Video)	Writers’ room
2018–2020	Mirzapur Seasons 1 & 2	Co-creator, showrunner, lead writer
2021	Netflix India two-series deal (a dark comedy and a drama)	Creator/showrunner
2024	Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper (Netflix)	Creator/showrunner
2024	Mirzapur Season 3	Creator/writer
2026	Mirzapur: The Movie	Writer

Money Factor


Corporate Salary (pre-films)	Around ₹9–10 lakh per annum in his Citicorp/Coca-Cola years — which he walked away from
First Writing Paycheque	₹18,000 for two months of work on the film Noora
Net Worth	Not Known — no verified figure exists in the public domain

Some Lesser Known Facts About Puneet Krishna

He wrote all of Mirzapur Season 1 in three days. In a Reddit AMA he revealed he wrote the entire first season in three days at his hometown in Meerut, and had “no idea that it would become this big and this much loved.”
He is an IIT-BHU metallurgical engineer. He got into IIT (BHU) Varanasi after Class 12 and joined the cultural department there. In his fourth year he wrote and directed a play that won first place — the moment friends told him, “if you can write and direct plays, that’s probably how movies are made too.”
He had zero childhood dreams of being a writer. “If you are asking about my childhood, I had no aspirations to become a writer or a filmmaker,” he has said. The poems came first, encouraged by his family, along with Urdu lessons his father insisted on.
He grew up in about a dozen towns. Because of his father’s transferable job, he lived across East, Central and Western UP — Bareilly, Badaun, Jaunpur among them — which is why he refuses to name a single hometown: “I come from Uttar Pradesh but not from a specific town.”
He quit a corporate career to chase films. After engineering and an MBA he worked at Citicorp and then Coca-Cola for four years, earning ₹9–10 lakh a year, flying for work, with secretaries and a nice home. He gave it all up — and then spent six months unemployed, reading the same newspaper four times a day to keep himself occupied, while his savings ran out.
His relatives mocked the decision. In eastern UP, he has said, an engineer/doctor/IAS job is still the ultimate marker of success, and quitting one invited plenty of taunts.
He swept floors to learn theatre. While still employed at Coca-Cola he took up theatre on the side and did cleaning work at the venue just to be around the craft.
He assisted Rajkumar Hirani. His first experience on a film set was as an Assistant Director on Munna Bhai Chale Amerika — the Munna Bhai instalment that was ultimately never made — after which he worked with Hirani on ad films.
His first paid script earned him ₹18,000. He wrote the film Noora — story and songs — over two months for director Shantaram Verma, for a fee of ₹18,000.
He was once told he wasn’t good enough because he wasn’t a hit writer. When he introduced himself as a writer to a prospective employer, the reply he got — “I’m not looking for you, I’m looking for a hit writer” — stayed with him.
He wrote Mirzapur in his darkest phase. By his own account, Excel Entertainment called asking for a story while his life was in a dark stretch — so he wrote a dark story in response.
A friend with a knife inspired one of the show’s best-known scenes. Munna Tripathi canvassing in a jeep during college elections comes straight from his life: he had a friend who carried a knife while campaigning, and Puneet — as the “studious one” who brought in more votes — was in that jeep.
He lived nine years in the world he wrote about. He spent roughly nine years in Jaunpur and Varanasi, and has said the bravado of Mirzapur‘s characters comes from watching people who never back down in an argument, because backing down reads as weakness.
He writes dialogue by walking around a room mumbling it. “My process is that I walk around the room mumbling every single line and word in the dialogue and fine-tune it till it sounds like it works,” he told BLink. If it sounds natural, it goes on paper.
He is a lyricist too, and credits poetry — which he began writing as a boy — for the strange musicality of Mirzapur‘s famously coarse dialogue.
He wrote Mirzapur with his own brother. Vineet Krishna, his brother, was a co-writer on the show; the two worked on making the gaalis land as naturally as possible.
He insists there is no villain in Mirzapur. “Each character in Mirzapur is a hero,” he has said — and specifically, “from my point of view, Munna was never an antagonist.”
He has pushed back on the glorification criticism. His answer to the charge that the show celebrates patriarchy and toxic masculinity: “Our primary job is to entertain and not preach… That is our only duty to this beautiful thing called ‘storytelling’.”
The show landed the writers in legal trouble. An FIR was filed against Karan Anshuman, Gurmmeet Singh, Puneet Krishna and Vineet Krishna at Kotwali Dehat police station in Mirzapur district over the portrayal of the city; the Allahabad High Court stayed their arrest.
Netflix signed him for two originals in 2021. Netflix India’s then content head Monika Shergill called him “undoubtedly one of India’s finest storytellers,” and the deal produced the dark comedy Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper in 2024.
He is a huge Roald Dahl fan and writes short stories on the side — he has said he particularly likes short films.
He credits Excel with treating writers properly. “In a place like Excel, yes, we are given our due,” he said, adding that he can walk into Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s cabin any time and disagree with them.
His franchise is going to cinemas in 2026. Mirzapur: The Movie, a prequel he has written, directed by Gurmmeet Singh and produced by Excel Entertainment, releases theatrically on 4 September 2026 in Hindi and Telugu, with Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Divyenndu and Rasika Dugal returning and Ravi Kishan joining the franchise.

Note on Sourcing

Compiled from The Indian Express, The Hindu BusinessLine (BLink), IBTimes India, Dainik Bhaskar, Deadline, Firstpost, The Hollywood Reporter India, The Times of India and Puneet Krishna’s own Reddit AMA. His exact date of birth, his wife’s name and his children’s details are not part of the public record, and have been left as “Not Known” rather than filled in with guesswork; his age is an estimate derived from a dated, attributable interview.