HYDERABAD: Zee Telugu’s music reality show, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa — The Singing Superstar, culminated on a high note after a run of 26 weeks recently. The 20-year-old Hyderabad-based Shruthika Samudrala was announced as the winner. After mesmerising one and all with her breath-taking performances during all the episodes, she walked away with the trophy, prize money of `1 lakh as well as a Maruti Suzuki Wagon. To the uninitiated, the show started off with a total of 24 contestants, with ace music director Koti, singer SP Shailaja, pop singer Smitha, and lyricist Ananth Sri Ram as judges.
The winner of the show, Shruthika, stole the limelight during the grand finale with her performance to Yemaaye na kavitha, meriseti puvva, sankuratri kodi, koncham neeru, and anathineeyara songs. A graduate in BA (Public Administration) and a trained Carnatic and light music singer, Shruthika was born into a music-loving family and stepped into the world of music when she was just 6 years old. Even she effectively balanced her studies and music by spending 2-3 hours every day practising in the morning before going to college. Talking about her win, Shruthika says, “It is a dream come true moment for me to have won the title. I am really happy that my hard work has paid off. All other finalists have also done extremely well in the finale, and they deserve equal appreciation as me.”
Shruthika’s journey to the finale was not made from a bed of roses; from the thousands of applicants, they finally selected the top 24 and top 8 for the finale performance. “The entire journey has been a great one. Incidentally, in my first episode, I was in the danger zone. But things turned around for the better from the second episode onwards. I started performing well, and the rest as they say is history. One of the other challenges was to sing complex songs which needed me to practice harder but all the judges and mentors helped me a lot,” she says.
Shruthika is up for trying multiple genre songs even though she does love to sing melodious songs more. At present, she has just finished singing for one of the songs in Mani Sharma’s movie and is working on her YouTube channel. “I believe singers who are not trained also can do great in the competition, given they believe in themselves. People might say many things, it is important to dream big,” concludes Shruthika.