Name: Aron Kollassani Selestin aka Aksomaniac
Age: 22
Location: Mumbai
Profession: Musician
What’s the big deal: Just last month, Aksomaniac, with his song ‘Amsham’, surged to No 4 on Spotify’s Viral 50 Global charts—a feat few non-English, Indian language songs have achieved before. The song has so far garnered 2.6 million views on YouTube and over 9 million streams on Spotify. Even today, the artist ranks 14 on the global list while maintaining a No 3 spot on the Viral 50 India list. “I did not expect the song to do what it is doing right now. A lot of people made the project happen. So, when people praise the song, it’s hard for me to internalise it as just my success. Sometimes once in two weeks, I’ll go sit at Churchgate and cry for five minutes. That’s probably my version of processing success,” he says of the ‘Amsham’ aftermath.
He could have been an engineer: You may not know this, but Hanumankind was a corporate fellow at Goldman Sachs and a gym trainer before he became known as the rapper behind ‘Big Dawgs’. Throughout history, we are familiar with the backstories of accidental hitmakers. But Aksomaniac knew his path even before he got his college degree. “I was pushed into music very early by my parents. My sister and I were sent to Carnatic vocal classes, but, honestly, I mostly slept through them. I was probably six or seven and had zero interest. I was basically there as moral support for my sister. Then my friends joined tabla classes in school just to hang out and cut classes, so I went with them too and quit after a year and a half.
“The real turning point happened when my school music teacher heard me sing and felt I had a natural instinct for music. She pushed me toward learning keyboard and piano. After that, something clicked. I became obsessed and started playing for nine hours a day. By 2024, I became very existential about whether I should continue engineering or fully commit to music. Then in 2025, during the beginning of my third year, I quit engineering,” says the artist who moved to Mumbai from Thiruvananthapuram last year.
He has a burner account: “In ninth grade, I started writing poetry and posting it on a burner account that nobody knows about. And nobody should know about it.”
His music syllabus: “Until 11th grade, most of the music I listened to was Malayalam and Hindi music. I grew up listening to composers like Gopi Sundar, Deepak Dev, Suresh Peters, and Vidyasagar. Then one of my friends introduced me to Frank Ocean and his album Blonde. James Blake and Sampha have also really influenced me, especially how emotionally honest they are in their music.”
The origin story: “AKS are my initials, Soma is my mother’s name, and ‘Maniac’ was just something I already had on Instagram. It all just came together in Aksomaniac.”
