Jonita Gandhiਜੋਨੀਤਾ ਗਾਂਧੀ

Jonita Gandhi, credited since 2024 simply as Jonita, is a Canadian playback singer and independent pop artist born in New Delhi and raised in Brampton and the Toronto area in a Punjabi family. She found her audience through YouTube covers, then sang for films in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi and more languages.

Where was Jonita Gandhi born and where did she grow up?

Jonita Gandhi was born on 23 October 1989 in New Delhi, India. She was born into a Punjabi family from Delhi, and the family emigrated to Canada when she was nine months old. She was raised in Brampton, Ontario, attended Turner Fenton Secondary School there, and the family later settled in Mississauga. In the Indo-Canadian community she became known as Toronto's Nightingale, a nickname that follows her Canadian upbringing rather than her birthplace.

Music was part of the house from the start. Her father Deepak Gandhi is an electronics engineer who played music as a hobby, playing keyboard at community events, and her brother also played music part time. Gandhi performed cover songs with them at live community events as a child, and she has said Bollywood music played constantly at home, from older classics to new releases, while school exposed her to western pop and other cultures. She trained formally in Western classical singing and also studied Hindustani classical singing.

How did Jonita Gandhi go from Western University to YouTube fame?

Gandhi's parents wanted education first, and she completed it. At the University of Western Ontario she finished degrees in health sciences and business in 2012, the business degree at the Ivey Business School. During university she performed at events regularly, and gigs were her main source of income as a student. At 16 she had auditioned for Canadian Idol and did not get past the audition rounds, a setback she later treated as a beginning rather than an ending.

The turning point was YouTube. From her bedroom she posted covers of Hindi film songs, sometimes with local musicians including pianist Akash Gandhi. Covers such as Pani Da Rang, Tujhko Jo Paaya, Tum Hi Ho, Suhaani Raat and Yeh Honsla went viral and built a global audience before any film studio called. A. R. Rahman discovered and shared one of her videos, and she toured alongside Sonu Nigam across countries including Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Caribbean. With two degrees in hand as a backup plan, she decided to try singing as a profession.

What was Jonita Gandhi's Bollywood breakthrough?

Her playback debut came with the title track of Chennai Express in 2013, the Shah Rukh Khan film with music by Vishal-Shekhar. She had visited the studio through her Ivey friend Abhishek Ghatak, who worked with the duo, and was asked to try the song. She has recalled that she was told it was a scratch track, walked out with no expectations, and then learned her voice had been kept on the released song, where she sang alongside S. P. Balasubrahmanyam.

Work with A. R. Rahman followed quickly. For Highway she sang Kahaan Hoon Main and Implosive Silence, and Rahman later featured her in his concert film One Heart. In 2013 she also sang Pinjra on MTV Coke Studio India, and made her Bengali singing debut the same year. The pattern of her career was set early: a Canadian raised singer with no film family connections, hired again and again by India's biggest composers because she could deliver in the studio.

Which songs is Jonita Gandhi best known for?

In Hindi films her best known songs include Sau Tarah Ke from Dishoom and The Breakup Song from Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, both in 2016. The Breakup Song, sung with Arijit Singh for composer Pritam, brought her nominations for the Filmfare Award, the Zee Cine Award and the Big ZEE Entertainment Award for best female playback singer, and she has said it was the song that first made audiences recognise her name and voice. Her Gilehriyaan from Dangal won the Critics' Choice Female Vocalist of the Year award at the Mirchi Music Awards. Later Hindi hits include Deva Deva from Brahmastra, sung with Arijit Singh, which was nominated at Filmfare and IIFA in 2023, and What Jhumka? from Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani in 2023.

Her Tamil work is just as central. For A. R. Rahman she sang Mental Manadhil in Mani Ratnam's O Kadhal Kanmani. With composer and singer Anirudh Ravichander she recorded Chellamma for Doctor, which she has said grew faster than any song she had sung before, and then Arabic Kuthu for Beast in 2022. Arabic Kuthu, also called Halamithi Habibo after its hook line, was released on 14 February 2022 and became the most viewed South Indian song within 24 hours at that time. For Arabic Kuthu she won Best Female Playback Singer, Tamil, at the South Indian International Movie Awards and at the Edison Awards. She has recorded in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada and other languages, often learning lines phonetically with help from native speakers in the studio.

Jonita as an independent artist: Love Like That and Ve Mundeya

Since 2024 Gandhi has performed as a solo pop artist under the single name Jonita. Her debut independent EP Love Like That, released in 2024, includes the title track with Pakistani American singer Ali Sethi and songs in Punjabi and English such as It Is What It Is (Madhaniya). Singles such as Channa and Beparwai followed, and she has described her own music as emotional pop with a rooted, ethnic soul. She has said playback work brought her the audience, and her independent music is where that audience now hears her own choices.

Her Punjabi and diaspora connections run through that newer work. In August 2025 she featured on Ve Mundeya with fellow Canadian artist Tesher, another singer of Punjabi background raised in Canada. Live work remains a large part of her career: she performed at the 2016 Jubilee Games in Dubai with Salim-Sulaiman, performed with Amit Trivedi on MTV Unplugged, and in 2025 she featured on Ed Sheeran's remix EP Play, The Remixes, on the track Heaven. For Punjabi listeners in Canada, her route matters as much as the songs: a Brampton basement, a business degree, a viral cover, and then a voice heard across Indian cinema in language after language.