Shankar Mahadevan is an Indian and a multiple National Film Award-winning music composer and singer. An accomplished musician in Bollywood  and Tamil Cinema, he is a part of the Shankar Ehsaan Loy trio team that provides music to Bollywood  films. He is considered as one of the best present-day Indian singers for his ability to sing at very high as well as low pitches.

Early life

Shankar Mahadevan was born and brought up in Chembur, a suburb of Mumbai to an Iyer family from Kerala. His Mother Tongue is Tamil. He learned Hindustani classical music and Carnatic music in his childhood and started playing the veena at the age of five. He went to OLPS High School in Chembur. He went to SIES College sion and completed his HSC. He graduated in 1988 with a degree in Computer Science Engineering from R.A.I.T. (D Y Patil, Navi Mumbai), under the auspices of Mumbai University. He is a qualified software engineer worked on Oracle Version Six Career

After working for a while for Leading Edge Systems, Shankar ventured into the field of music. He earned his first award as a playback singer in a Tamil movie, collaborating with A. R. Rahman and winning a National Film Award for his song in Kandukondain Kandukondain. A prominent star in the Kodambakkam film industry, he later gained more recognition by releasing his first music album called Breathless in 1998, in which he appears to sing through the whole song in a single breath. He later got into music direction and became a part of the Shankar Ehsaan Loy trio, composing music for Hindi films.

He has sung in many movies for A. R. Rahman, Anu Malik and other music directors, performing songs like "Urvashi Take It Easy" from Humse Hai Muqabla (1995), "I Love You" from Auzaar (1997), "Kay Sera Sera" from Pukar (2000) and many more songs in the nineties. He sings songs in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, and Marathi.

He enjoyed a successful run with the fusion jazz band SILK with Louis Banks on keyboards, Sivamani on percussion, Sridhar Parthasarathy on mridangam and Karl Peters on bass guitar.

Shankar Mahadevan has also provided vocals for several songs by the band Remember Shakti, which features maestros like Zakir Hussain, John McLaughlin, U. Srinivas and Selvaganesh Vinayakram. He was music director and singer for the famous "School Chale Hum" song that used to come on Doordarshan.

He was a mentor on Zee TV's musical reality show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2009.

He is a Team Captain, judge, and mentor on STAR Plus's musical show Music Ka Maha Muqqabla for the team Shankar's Rockstars and his team won Music Ka Maha Muqqabala 2010.