Sunidhi Chauhan
Sunidhi Chauhan (born Nidhi Chauhan on 14 August 1983) is one of the most popular Indian playback singers and performers today, best known for her Hindi film songs in Bollywood. She has also recorded songs in several other Indian dialects and languages, such as; Oriya, Punjabi, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese and Nepali, Urdu and English, making her one of the most recorded voices in India today with over 3000 studio recordings. Sunidhi Chauhan made her International debut with the song Heartbeat (Indian Mix), a collaboration with Enrique Iglesias. She has been awarded with prestigious national awards on several occasions and has established herself as the strongest live performer and singer in India to date. In 2014, Sunidhi Chauhan also made it to the list of Asia's sexiest Women. Legendary Lata Mangeshkar stated that Sunidhi is Numero Uno singer of this generation ahead of her contemporaries. Award winning composer and singer Shankar Mahadevan has stated on many occasions that Sunidhi is the Best female singer live-performer in India today. She is credited for being a game changer and proved to be the coming of age of strong female singing Chauhan began to sing at the age of four and was discovered by a local TV anchor. She won recognition through a televised singing contest, Meri Awaz Suno, which she won, and made her entrance into playback singing with the Hindi film Shastra' at the age of 13'. Her breakthrough was Ram Gopal Varma's film Mast, in which she sang the hit song "Ruki Ruki Si Zindagi." She has been nominated for fourteen Filmfare Awards, winning it on two occasions as well as a Filmfare RD Burman Award for New Music Talent. She has won two Star Screen Awards, two IIFA Awards and one Zee Cine Award. She started her singing career as a child, giving her first performance at the age of four, in a local temple in Delhi. She did her early studies in Greenway modern School, Dilshad Garden in Delhi. Thereafter, she began to participate in, and sing for, competitions and local gatherings. When the famous stage and TV anchor Tabassum spotted her talent, she made her sing live in her show Tabassum Hit Parade and asked her family to shift to Mumbai. Tabassum then introduced her to Kalyanji and Anandji Bhai. Her family shifted to Mumbai in a bid to further develop the young singer's skills, and Chauhan became the lead singer in Kalyanji's 'Little Wonders' troupe. Recognition first met her in 1996, through the music show Meri Aawaz Suno – the first such televised contest in India – which was broadcast through the Indian national television channel, Doordarshan. She won the competition and bagged the top prize of recording an album, Aira Ghaira Nathu Khaira, with HMV. Unluckily for Chan, Aira Ghaira Nathu Khaira was promoted as a children's album and failed to get the recognition it deserved. In 2002, Chauhan observed this in an interview: "My first song and the contest did not help me much. Nothing happened for a while. But by then, I had made up my mind that I will pursue singing as a career." Chauhan stepped into the world of playback singing with the 1996 Bollywood film, Shastra, after Aadesh Srivastava asked her to lend her voice to the song "Larki Deewaani Dekho, Ladka Deewaana." She followed it with work in films like Gang, Veergati, Dahek, Bade Dilwala, Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat and Samar. By the age of nineteen, Chauhan had lent her voice to over 350 songs.