Sonu Nigam (born 30 July 1973 in Faridabad, Haryana, India) is an Indian singer whose songs have been featured in numerous Hindi and Kannada movies, as well as films in Tamil, Assamese, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi and Telugu. He has also released numerous Indi-pop albums and acted in a few Hindi movies. He had changed the spelling of his last name from 'Nigam' to 'Niigaam' in accordance with numerology, but later returned to the original spelling 'Nigam'.
Sonu Nigam began his singing career at the age of three, when he joined his father on stage to sing Mohammed Rafi's "Kya Hua Tera Vaada, Wo Kasam Wo Irada". From then on Sonu accompanied his father on his singing appearances at weddings and parties. In his teenage years he successfully participated in several music competitions. He moved to Mumbai with his father to begin his Bollywood singing career at the age of 19.
His initial years in Mumbai proved to be a struggle, beginning by singing covers of Mohammed Rafi songs, mainly for a number of Rafi Ki Yaadein albums released by T-Series. T-Series promoter Gulshan Kumar played a key role in identifying Nigam's talent by giving him a chance to reach a larger audience. These albums contributed to T-Series for some years although Nigam's singing style was regarded by some to be like that of a "Rafi clone". Nigam's first movie song as a playback singer was Janam (1990), which was never officially released. He also got a break in radio commercials until he appeared on the popular TV show Sa Re Ga Ma, after which there was no turning back. He was trained by classical singer Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan.