Anusha Dandekar Australian Singer and Actress From Khartoum

Anusha Dandekar is an Australian singer, actress and television presenter based in India. She was born on 9 January 1982 in Khartoum, Sudan. She became familiar to Indian audiences as a video jockey and host on MTV India, and she has also appeared in Hindi and Marathi films, released music, and worked as a judge and mentor on a modelling competition. Her YouTube channel had about 406,000 subscribers when it was last counted in September 2025.

Early life

Dandekar was born in Khartoum to a Marathi family whose roots are in Pune, India. She grew up in Kingsgrove, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. In the early 2000s she moved to Mumbai to look for work in the entertainment industry.

Career

Dandekar arrived in Mumbai in 2002, when she was 19. Her first job there was as an anchor on the MTV programme House of Style. Over the following years she hosted several other shows for the same channel, among them MTV Dance Crew, MTV Teen Diva, MTV News and MTV Love School.

She began acting in 2003 with the film Mumbai Matinee. In 2005 she appeared in Viruddh... Family Comes First, a film whose cast included Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Sharmila Tagore and John Abraham. She then took part in the musical Miss Bollywood, and in 2006 she acted with Arshad Warsi and Sanjay Dutt in Anthony Kaun Hai?. Her first Marathi film was Jai Jai Maharashtra Majha in 2012.

Her music career began in 2012 with the English-language single "Better Than Your Ex", which came out in June of that year.

Outside film and television, Dandekar worked in fashion. She appeared on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Elle and Seventeen, and she endorsed the brands Reebok, Toni & Guy, Crocs and Lee Jeans.

Her work on reality television includes a role as a judge on India's Next Top Model, where she sat alongside the model and actress Lisa Haydon as of 2014. In 2017 she became a mentor on the same programme, which is broadcast on MTV India.

Recognition

In 2006 Dandekar received the Best Debut award at the Maharashtra Times Awards for her performance in Viruddh. In 2008 she won Best VJ at the Cosmopolitan Fun Fearless Female Awards.