igenius Young Singing stars Grand Finale

MaxLife Insurance is a company that seems to have a special relationship with the children of India. Over the past few years it has endeavoured to provide some or the other opportunities to children each year as a part of its igenius programmes. There have been scholarships awarded as well as young authors hunt conducted under the igenius banner.

However, this year they did something different. In collaboration with Universal music, they came up with a singing event for children to identify the best talent in India. This is what gave birth to the "Young Singing Stars" competition which saw the participation of more than 1,30,000 participants from across the nation. By the 17th of December, after a rigorous elimination process, the top ten participants (five from the senior category and five from the junior category) were remaining for the grand finale in Mumbai which I had the opportunity to attend because of Blogadda.

Mansi Scott was the host for the evening who brought the event to life by singing one of her unreleased songs. Soon thereafter, the Grand Finale,-- taking place just one day after the horrific events which on 16th Dec unfolded in Peshawar -- struck the right chord as the participants along with the audience were asked to observe 2 mins silence for the victims.

After speeches by senior executives MaxLife, Mr. Devraj Sanyal, MD, Universal Music Group who also has a band of his own spoke about how excited he was to be associated with Young Singing Stars and identifying new talent. He was also a part of the jury for the finale.

Shraddha Sharma, the next member of the jury then took the stage and mesmerised the audience with her melodious voice which has enthralled millions on YouTube, and made her a shoo in for singing stardom.

Salim Ali, the man whom the crowd was dying to see was the next. He also expressed his anguish regarding the attack on the Army School in Peshawar and dedicated his rendition of Ali Maula as a prayer to the victims.

With all the preliminaries done, the youngsters finally took stage for round one of their performances. It seemed like they were managing to outperform each other constantly because each song seemed like the best one.

With the first round of finalists' performances over, acapella band RaagaTrippin took the stage and out in an absolutely mind blowing performance! Simply the range of sounds that they manage to produce using merely their vocal cords let me speechless!

Their performance was followed by another round of finalists' performances which were again superb. I think a large amount of credit is also due to igenius, who I heard provided mentoring opportunity the finalists before the grand finale. I am sure that the kiddos got to learn a great deal from the mentors.

Kavita Seth then took stage to while the scores were being tallied. 

And then last, as the participants and their parents waited with bated breath, the event concluded with Shivam Ahuja of the junior category and Shraddha Shree of the senior category being declared the Winners!!!

However, that did not mean that the others went home empty handed. What I loved about the Young Singing Stars was that while the winners got an album contract each with Universal, the four other finalists also got a single song contract each! Thus Universal and MaxLife Insurance are providing all ten of them an opportunity to kick start their singing careers!

Can't wait to hear those voices again! I hope they get to release their singles/albums soon!