Ankit Tiwari

Ankit Tiwari is an Indian playback singer, live performer, music director, composer. His career began upon meeting Pradeep Sarkar where he got a chance to work on jingles and started composing background music for television programmes. Subsequently, he was offered to compose music for Do Dooni Chaar (2010) and Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster (2011), where he started his singing career with the song he composed for the latter. In 2014, he collaborated with Mohit Suri for Ek Villain, where he composed and sang the song "Galliyan" for which he received two nominations in Filmfare Awards, winning Best Male Playback Singer, which is the only Filmfare Award won by someone other than Arijit Singh from 2014 to 2020. He also recorded the song "O Yara" for the Pakistani film, Bin Roye. Life and career 1986–2007: Early life Tiwari was born in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. His parents own a music troupe in Kanpur called "Raju Suman and Party" which performs at religious convocations. His mother is a devotional singer. Though his parents wanted him to complete his studies first, his inclination towards music led them to decide on training him professionally. He trained in classical music from Vinod Kumar Dwivedi before training in piano, Dhrupad and Western vocals. He instituted at and won several local music competitions during the time. He used to work as a production head at a radio station in Gwalior, before he moved to Mumbai in December 2007 along with his brother Ankur Tiwari. 2008–11: Beginnings and early releases In Mumbai, Tiwari met Pradeep Sarkar who was working on a film at that time. Though the film got shelved, Sarkar gave him, along with other musicians, a chance to work on jingles. It was then he composed a couple of background scores for the television programmes. Tiwari met Habib Faisal, who offered him to compose the music for his directorial debut film Do Dooni Chaar which was then released in 2010.