When Raakh dropped on Amazon Prime Video, audiences across India were shaken.
The crime thriller, inspired by the infamous 1978 Ranga–Billa case, was disturbing in the most compelling way. And right at the centre of that discomfort was a man named Akash Makhija, playing a cold-blooded antagonist called Babu with a calm intensity that left viewers genuinely unsettled.
What most people didn’t know was that behind that chilling performance was over a decade of auditions, rejections, and a quiet determination not to give up.
Early Life and Background
Akash Makhija was born on July 6, 1994, in Kalyan, Mumbai. He grew up in a Sindhi joint family in Ulhasnagar, Maharashtra — a background far removed from the film industry and its connections.
He completed his schooling at SPP New Era High School and later joined RD National College in Bandra in 2011.
By the time he was 17, he had already started making the daily commute from Kalyan to Andheri — a long, tiring journey that he repeated every day in search of auditions. Nobody in his family had any connection to the entertainment industry. He was completely on his own, walking into casting rooms without a contact, a recommendation, or a safety net.
The 14-Year Struggle Nobody Saw
Akash spent nearly 14 years collecting rejections before the industry finally paid attention.
In the early years, he survived by doing television commercials for brands like Cadbury and McDonald’s, taking episodic roles in shows like Crime Patrol, and appearing as a junior artist in the TV series Sankatmochan Jai Hanuman. The pay was minimal. The recognition was zero.
His first real break came with the youth-based TV show Gumraah, where he was paid Rs 2,000. Not per episode. Total.
He later got a full-fledged role in the 2017 sitcom Har Mard Ka Dard, which gave him a bit more visibility. The same year, he appeared in the Bollywood film Half Girlfriend alongside Arjun Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor — playing the role of Arjun’s friend, a small but meaningful step into films.
He also appeared in the TV serial Sargam Ki Sadhe Satii (2021), continuing to build his craft quietly while the bigger breaks remained elusive.
One of the more painful moments in this journey came when he lost a lead role in a Rajshri production — not in a meeting, not in a formal call, but through a text message. He reportedly went to the washroom and cried alone before picking himself back up.
Breaking into OTT
Akash made his OTT debut with Nirmal Pathak Ki Ghar Wapsi (2022) on Sony LIV, playing the character Aatish Pathak. The performance earned him a nomination at the Filmfare OTT Awards 2023 — a first taste of industry recognition after years in the background.
He followed that with Gobind in Gram Chikitsalay (2025–2026), a TVF-produced series on Amazon Prime Video that brought him another Filmfare OTT Awards nomination in 2025.
Each role was building something, even if the wider audience hadn’t caught up yet.
Raakh: The Role That Changed Everything
In 2026, Akash Makhija competed against nearly 700 to 800 actors for the role of Babu in the Amazon Prime Video series Raakh.
He wasn’t the first choice. He was thrown out of the process at one point. But he came back, fought for the role, and ultimately landed it.
The 8-episode crime thriller is inspired by the 1978 Ranga–Billa case in Delhi, which involved the abduction and murder of two teenage siblings — one of the most disturbing criminal cases in Indian history. Playing a character rooted in that darkness required a level of commitment that Akash brought completely.
The response was overwhelming — and not entirely comfortable. Viewers were so unsettled by his performance that he began receiving death threats on social media. In his own words, “Whenever I open my Instagram DM, I see people want to kill me.” He took it as a compliment rather than a warning, reasoning that if people felt nothing, they wouldn’t have reacted at all.
He also won the IMDb Breakout Star Award for the role — a recognition that felt long overdue for someone who had been quietly working for over a decade.
His Wife’s Reaction to Raakh
Perhaps the most human detail in Akash’s Raakh story involves his wife, Roshni Budhiraja.
When Roshni watched the series, she couldn’t separate her husband from the character he was playing. The performance was so convincing that even looking into his eyes after watching the episodes made her feel scared. She reportedly asked him to sleep on the sofa one night because she was genuinely shaken.
“She told me she couldn’t separate me from the character. It felt so horrifying to her,” Akash shared in an interview. “It took her some time to process how haunting it all felt.”
Also Read: Gauri Spratt Biography
Love Story and Marriage
Akash and Roshni first met in 2010 and became close friends before their relationship slowly evolved into something deeper.
In May 2025, the couple got engaged. In April 2026, they got married — a quiet, personal celebration that felt like the completion of a journey that had begun alongside Akash’s own long road through the industry.
Roshni described their bond warmly, writing that what they shared was “pure, selfless love” — a friendship that became something neither of them had planned for but both had clearly needed.
Where He Stands Now
Akash Makhija is 31 years old, newly married, and finally recognised for the actor he always was.
Fourteen years is a long time to keep showing up for auditions when the doors keep closing. Most people would have quit. He didn’t — and Babu from Raakh is the proof that the wait had a point.
For audiences who watched Raakh and felt genuinely disturbed by his performance, the man behind it is about as far from Babu as a person can get. Soft-spoken, passionate, and shaped entirely by persistence rather than privilege.
That’s the real story.