Bindu Subramaniam delivered a mesmerising performance at The Telegraph She Awards 2025, accompanied by Mahesh Raghavan and Karthik Mani on stage. Their music, influenced by Indian and global styles, set the tone for the night — audiences were soon clapping along to their versions of Bella Ciao and Coldplay’s Something Just Like This among many other numbers. Subramaniam who calls herself a ‘quarter Bengali’ was excited to perform in Calcutta. She said: “I am always happy to be in Calcutta because I have this strong Bengali connection. I’m a quarter Bengali. My grandfather is Bengali, he was Uday Shankar and Pandit Ravi Shankar’s brother, so for us, that Bangla side of the family is something that we’re very connected with. As far as music goes, I’ve been performing ever since I was a child. I have two bands that I work with now. One is SubraMania and the other is the Thayir Sadam Project. While the former started in 2014 and the latter in 2018, both of them are different spaces for me to explore styles of music that I’m passionate about.”
Subramaniam, who has travelled the world and has performed for audiences up to 5,00,000 and has delivered multiple TEDx talks, is carrying her family’s legacy and yet building her own identity. “When I was very young, it was obviously this whole thing of coming from a family of musicians and the expectations that are put on you. And it takes time for you to be able to be comfortable in your own voice. So the kind of music that I do is different for the kind of music that my parents do,” she says. The educator adds: “I’m aware of the privilege that I come from and now I’m in a position where I’m grateful that there’s a lot of love associated with the music that my father does, with the music that my mother does, with the music that my brother does. But it’s also an opportunity for me to be seen as an individual. Now my daughter is performing as well and she is also following her heart and doing the kind of music which is different.”
In addition to performing, she has been working in music education for the last 15 years. She started SaPa with the idea of making high-quality music education accessible to everyone. “Over the last decade, it’s been very interesting to see how kids who don’t come from backgrounds of music are able to learn music in school in a positive and meaningful way and how that impacts their understanding of the world around them. So our kids are singing in 10-15 languages, which helps them understand cultural contexts. And this year we’re working with 45,000 kids every day. So SaPa has become a movement for us that we’re all very proud of and something that we like to support,” said Subramaniam, who is currently working on her parents’ biography.