The Kannada people, or Kanarese (masculine Kannadiga, feminine Kannadati) are the people who natively speak the Kannada language. Kannadigas are mainly located in the state of Karnataka in India and in the neighboring states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa and Maharashtra. The English plural is Kanarese, Kannadas, or Kannadigas.

Kannadigas are people who speak Kannada, its variants or its various dialects as their native language. Various districts of Karnataka have mixed variations of dialects like Dharwad Kannada,Sankethi, Naddvara Kannada, Havigannada, Bengaluru Kannada,Are Bhashe, Mysooru Kannada, Kundagannada, etc. Janapadas of Soliga, Badaga and other tribes of Karnataka having rich contribution to Kannada literature have their own style. Many Kannadigas have emigrated to countries like United States of America, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Apart from native speakers, Kannada is also spoken by Tuluvas, Konkani, Kodavas of Karnataka and Telugu and Tamil settlers in the state.

Prakash Rai (born 26 March 1965), better known by his stage name Prakash Raj, is a National Award winning film actor, director and producer who has worked in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam films.He got introduced to films by K. Balachander in the movie Duet (1994). In remembrance, he named his production company "Duet Movies".

He has played a variety of roles, most notably as the antagonist in Kannada, Telugu and Tamil and of late, as a character actor. He is considered to be one amongst the club of natural actors. He has won a National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1998 for Mani Ratnam's Iruvar and a National Film Award for Best Actor in 2009 for his role in Kanchivaram, a Tamil film directed by Priyadarshan.

Prakash Raj was born to a ethnic Bunt family in Puttur, Karnataka on 26 March 1965. He did his schooling from St.Joseph's Indian High School in Bangalore. He later joined St. Josephs College of commerce, Bangalore, where he participated in many plays.^{[citation needed]}

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar ( pronunciation (help·info); born 24 April 1973) is an Indian cricketer widely considered to be one of the greatest batsmen of all time. He is the leading run-scorer and century maker in Test and one-day international cricket. He is the first player to score a double century in ODI cricket. In 2002, just 12 years into his career, Wisden ranked him the second greatest Test batsman of all time, behind Donald Bradman, and the second greatest one-day-international (ODI) batsman of all time, behind Viv Richards. Tendulkar was a part of the 2011 Cricket World Cup winning Indian team in the later part of his career, his first such win in six World Cup appearances for India. He is currently nominated for receiving the Bharat Ratna award.