Jonita Gandhi

Jonita Gandhi (born October 23, 1989) is a Canadian singer of Indian descent. She has recorded songs predominantly in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu languages with few in Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Kannada and Malayalam languages. Some of her most acclaimed songs include "The Breakup Song", "Mental Manadhil", "Chellama" and "Arabic Kuthu". She is also well known for her YouTube presence. Her singing debut started through Chennai Express in 2013.

Personal life
Gandhi was born in a Punjabi family from Delhi. Her family emigrated to Brampton, Canada when she was nine months old, where she was raised. Her family later settled in Mississauga.

Gandhi studied in Turner Fenton Secondary School and attended the Ivey Business School of the University of Western Ontario where she completed her degrees in health science and business in 2012. She has had formal training in Western and Hindustani classical singing.

Career
Gandhi grew up around music as both her father and brother were part time musicians. They would often perform cover songs together at live community events. At age 16, she auditioned for Canadian Idol but did not get past the audition rounds. She began making YouTube covers from her bedroom, sometimes featuring other local musicians including Akash Gandhi. The videos quickly went viral and contained notable covers of popular Hindi-film songs, including "Pani Da Rang", "Tujhko Jo Paaya", "Tum Hi Ho", "Suhaani Raat", "Yeh Honsla".

Gandhi's career in playback singing began with an opportunity to perform alongside Sonu Nigam on a tour. This tour crossed various countries including Russia, UK, US and the Caribbean. Gandhi started playback singing with Chennai Express. The music for this film was composed by Vishal–Shekhar. She further worked in other Bollywood movies like Highway, singing both "Kahaan Hoon Main" and "Implosive Silence".

Gandhi worked as a playback singer with music directors including A. R. Rahman and Pritam. Rahman featured Gandhi in the concert film One Heart. Gandhi performed at the 2016 Jubilee Games in Dubai with Salim–Sulaiman and with Amit Trivedi on MTV Unplugged.

In 2020, Jonita Gandhi was involved in mentoring and judging the Indian kids singing reality show Taare Zameen Par on StarPlus

As of 2021, Gandhi is set to make her film debut with director Vignesh Shivan's Tamil film Walking/Talking Strawberry Icecream, starring Krishnakumar Balasubramanian. As a part of IPL 2023 Closing ceremony, Jonita gave her musical performance along with DIVINE at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.