Baiju N Nair has around 1.12 million YouTube subscribers and 250.7 million views. By the standards of this list, that’s modest. Arjyou has three times the audience. M4 Tech has twelve times.
He is also, almost certainly, wealthier than most of them.
Every net worth calculator that ranks Kerala creators by channel size gets Baiju N Nair completely wrong, because YouTube is roughly the fifth most important thing he does. He is the Chief Editor and Managing Director of Smart Drive, Malayalam’s leading automobile magazine. He has written 17 books. He won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2018. He has hosted television shows on Indiavision and Asianet for decades. And he was the first person to drive from Kochi to London.
That last one isn’t a metaphor. He drove there.
The drive
Over 24,000 kilometres. More than 20 countries crossed. The first person from India to reach London by road.
The travelogue he wrote about it, Londonilekk Oru Road Yathra, won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Best Travelogue in 2018. That’s a state literary award, judged on writing rather than on views, which places him in a category none of the other creators on this list occupy.
He has since visited 133 countries. He has test driven, by various counts, somewhere between 8,000 and 25,000 vehicles, with reports on over 100 test drives across more than 100 countries. The figures vary by source, so treat the exact number as unconfirmed, but the scale is not in dispute.
Seventeen books. A weekly column in Mathrubhumi starting in 1996, which means he’s been publishing for three decades.
He invented the category
In 1996 he began a weekly automobile column in Mathrubhumi. That column led him to launch Top Gear, India’s first regional-language automobile magazine.
Read that again. Not Kerala’s first. India’s first automobile magazine in an Indian language. Before that, if you wanted to read about cars in India you read English.
He’s now Chief Editor and Managing Director of Smart Drive, which is the leading automobile magazine in Malayalam, and he hosts the Smart Drive television programme on Asianet News. He was the first auto journalist in Kerala to both start such a magazine and anchor such a television show.
So when a YouTube tracking site calculates his net worth from view counts, it’s measuring the newest and smallest revenue line of a thirty-year media career. It’s like valuing a publishing house by its Twitter account.
Why the automotive audience is worth more
Here’s the thing that separates him financially from creators with far bigger channels.
A gaming or reaction viewer is typically a teenager or a college student. Advertisers pay relatively little to reach them, because they have limited money to spend. A comedy sketch viewer is watching for entertainment with no purchase intent at all.
A Baiju N Nair viewer is often watching a review of a car they are actively considering buying.
That’s an audience about to make a purchase in the ₹5 lakh to ₹50 lakh range, and it makes his 1.12 million subscribers commercially worth more per head than several million subscribers on a comedy channel. Automotive advertising budgets in India are enormous, and manufacturers, dealerships, insurers, tyre companies, and accessory brands all compete for exactly this viewer.
Effective CPM on automotive content in India runs well above the Malayalam average that trackers apply by default. Any estimate using a generic $1.21 per thousand views rate for his channel is starting from the wrong number.
| Income source | Visible to net worth calculators? |
|---|---|
| Smart Drive magazine (Chief Editor and MD) | No |
| Asianet News television show | No |
| 17 published books and royalties | No |
| Manufacturer test drive and launch coverage | No |
| Literary festival appearances and speaking | No |
| Instagram (around 290,000 followers) | No |
| YouTube ad revenue | Yes |
One row visible, six invisible. That’s why no published figure for him is worth much.
What he’s actually worth
There is no reliable published estimate, and I’m not going to invent one.
What can be said: he holds a Managing Director position at an established magazine, has three decades of broadcast income, 17 books in print, and a YouTube channel with a quarter of a billion views serving the highest-CPM content category available in Kerala. He travels to 133 countries and test drives thousands of vehicles, much of which is funded by manufacturers and publications rather than out of pocket.
That’s a senior media executive’s career with a creator business attached, not a creator with a side hustle.
If I had to place him, I’d say his wealth is more comparable to a Malayalam magazine proprietor or a senior television executive than to a YouTuber. The specific number is unknowable, and anyone publishing one with confidence is guessing.
What I’d push back on hardest is any list that ranks him below Arjyou or Sanju Techy because his subscriber count is smaller. Subscriber count measures attention. It doesn’t measure income, and for this particular person the gap between the two is enormous.
The lesson in his career
He started with a newspaper column in 1996 about cars, in a language market where nobody was writing about cars.
Everything since has been the same move repeated: find the gap, build the thing that fills it, own it. First regional-language auto magazine. First Kerala auto journalist with a television show. First Indian to drive to London. Then YouTube, when YouTube became where the audience was.
The channel isn’t his career. It’s the current distribution channel for a career that predates YouTube by nine years.
That’s a useful correction to how these rankings usually get written. The Malayalam creators with the biggest channels are mostly people who found YouTube early and grew with it. Baiju N Nair is something rarer: an established professional who added the platform to an existing body of work, and whose value was never dependent on it.
Frequently asked questions
What is Baiju N Nair’s net worth?
No reliable estimate exists. His income spans a magazine editorship and managing directorship, three decades of television, 17 published books, and YouTube. Any figure calculated from his channel alone measures a small fraction of his earnings.
Who is Baiju N Nair?
An automotive and travel journalist from Kottayam, Kerala. He is Chief Editor and Managing Director of Smart Drive magazine, hosts the Smart Drive show on Asianet News, has written 17 books, and won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2018.
Did Baiju N Nair really drive from India to London?
Yes. He is recorded as the first person from India to reach London by road, covering over 24,000 kilometres across more than 20 countries. His travelogue about the journey, Londonilekk Oru Road Yathra, won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Best Travelogue.
How many subscribers does Baiju N Nair have?
Around 1.12 million with roughly 250.7 million views. He has been active on YouTube since 2014 and has around 290,000 Instagram followers.
What is Smart Drive?
The leading automobile magazine in Malayalam, where Baiju N Nair serves as Chief Editor and Managing Director. It is also the name of the automobile show he hosts on Asianet News. He previously launched Top Gear, India’s first regional-language auto magazine.
How many countries has Baiju N Nair visited?
133 by his own account. He has test driven vehicles in more than 100 countries, with reported totals ranging from 8,000 to 25,000 vehicles depending on the source.
See how he compares to other Kerala creators in our guide to Malayalam YouTubers net worth.
Of everyone on this list, he’s the one whose ranking position tells you the least about his bank balance. The subscriber column is the wrong column for him, and it always was.
