The latest Indian sensation on YouTube is Shraddha Sharma, a girl from Dehradun, who has captured the nation’s attention through her voice. The 15-yea rold, who uploaded her first song “Main Tenu Samjhawan Ki” from the movie “Virsa” on April 30, 2011, has since then uploaded six more videos of her singing, that have amassed more than two million views in all, making her channel – Shraddharockin – the highest subscribed channel in India with 18,583 subscribers.
She created her page on a social networking site on August 17 and within a month she had over 49,850 fans, and as many as 2206 people following her on another microblogging site. She describes herself as a “Normal girl residing in Dehradun”. Giving credit to her mother for introducing her to music, she says, “She is my first teacher, my first audience and my inspiration.” The Class XI science student, who belongs to a family of musicians, says she wants to be a rockstar. “I want to see myself standing in Justin Bieber’s place, or even higher. I know my dreams are really big, but I believe dreams are fulfilled only if you have the power to see them.”
But as they say, with fame comes criticism, Shraddha too had to face criticism with comments like — ‘She is just a pretty face’, ‘Her guitar playing is fake and she makes weird faces’. She answered her critics by tweeting, “To all my haters who posted crap on my page last night… Love me or hate me I’m still gonna shine. Keep rockin (sic).”
And shining she is, for sure, with most of her viewer’s posting positive messages on her videos. Trisha posts, “You are a talented young woman…amazing voice.” While Nidhi posted, “Big fan! Good music.”
Sharddha will be seen performing at the IIT Delhi festival Rendezvous this year.