Varshini Sounderajan (Bigg Boss Telugu 10) Biography: Age, Family & Photos

Known for

Television anchor and actress

Active since

2014 (Chandamama Kathalu)

Also known as

Shamili Sounderajan — her earlier screen name · Anchor Varshini · Jabardasth Varshini · Dhee Varshini · వర్షిణి సౌందరాజన్ in Telugu

Age

32 (born 6 April 1994)

Hometown

Hyderabad, Telangana

Caste

Not publicly disclosed — she has never stated one

Currently on

Bigg Boss Telugu 10 (Star Maa · JioHotstar, from 6 September 2026)

Film

Malli Modalaindi (2022)

Instagram

@varshini_sounderajan

Facebook

@MeVarshiniSounderajan

YouTube

@urssvarshini

Threads

@varshini_sounderajan

Vote for Varshini Sounderajan in the Bigg Boss Telugu 10 poll → Unofficial fan poll on our homepage; the vote that counts runs in the JioHotstar app.

Varshini Sounderajan is one of the ten celebrity contestants in the Bigg Boss Telugu 10 house. Two million people follow her on Instagram, and most of them found her the same way: on a weekend evening, on ETV, running the floor on Jabardasth or leading a team on Dhee. She is 32, she started out as a model for pocket money, and for years she said no to this show.

Who is Varshini Sounderajan?

She is a television anchor and actress who has spent about a decade inside Telugu entertainment without ever quite becoming a film star, and who is probably more recognisable than most film stars because of it. “I have no family background,” she said in February 2025. “I came in at random, I entertained people at random.”

Give her a store opening, a Sankranti special or a comedy show and she will find the joke in it. Asked to describe herself in one word, she used three: beautiful by heart.

Varshini Bigg Boss age and date of birth

Varshini Sounderajan was born on 6 April 1994, which makes her 32 years old as Bigg Boss Telugu 10 begins. She was born in Hyderabad and has lived there her whole life.

What is Varshini’s real name?

Her real name is Varshini Sounderajan. She has a second one too, Shamili Sounderajan, and it accounts for most of the confusion around her early career.

Shamili is the name she went by when she started. Her first films were reported under it, and so was her engagement in 2015. The reference works still use it. Her Wikidata entry, Q49561944, is filed under Shamili Sounderajan with her birth date of 6 April 1994 on it, and Telugu media archives carry her profile as “Shamili / Varshini Sounderajan”. Searches for her early work come back under that first name for the same reason. She has gone by Varshini for her whole television career.

The surname is Tamil, and it is the part that moves around in print. Listings and captions carry Soundararajan, Sounderarajan and Soundarajan. She spells it Sounderajan, and that is the spelling on all four of her own accounts.

The rest are audience shorthand. Television listings call her Anchor Varshini. Jabardasth Varshini and Dhee Varshini attach her to the two shows people know her from. On her own Instagram she writes her name in lower case, “Varshini sounderajan”; her YouTube handle is @urssvarshini; her Facebook page is titled simply Varshini. In Telugu her name is written వర్షిణి సౌందరాజన్.

Two other people share the name. A Varshini is credited in Shambo Shiva Shambo (2010), a film that came out when this Varshini was 15 and four years before her debut, and a YouTuber called Varshini turns up in the same searches for her age.

Varshini Sounderajan images and photos

The face Telugu television knows: half saree, temple jewellery, festival special.

One of her recent portraits, and the photograph her Bigg Boss Telugu 10 profile card is drawn from.

She does the festival specials for both Star Maa and Zee, whichever channel is asking.

Nearly 1,000 posts on Instagram, and a photoshoot in most of them.

The modelling instinct never left. It is where the whole career started.

Two million followers, and a comments section she says she had to learn to read selectively.

“I’m basically a model,” she said in 2018. Everything else came after.

Where is Varshini Sounderajan from?

Her native place is Hyderabad. She was born there in 1994 to a Tamil family, went to school and college there, and works out of the city now.

Varshini’s education and college

She went to St Francis School and then took a B.Sc. in Electronics at St. Francis Degree and PG College, affiliated to Osmania University in Hyderabad. She finished the degree before any of this started.

“After pursuing a B.Sc. in Electronics, I started modelling as a hobby, for added pocket money,” she said in 2018. Electronics has never come up again.

Anchor Varshini’s career before fame

Modelling, and by accident. She took it on as a hobby after her degree, for extra money, and it turned into everything else. “One thing led to another and soon I was cast for the national-award winning film Chandamama Kathalu.”

She was not planning a career at all. “I thought I would get married,” she said of that period. “But it didn’t go like that.” The work arrived, she took whatever came, and she found she liked it. “Being in front of the camera gives me a high, and the support that the audience gives you is like none other.”

Varshini’s television career on Jabardasth and Dhee

Television made her, and she gives it the credit. Asked why strangers recognise her abroad, she put it down to the small screen and nothing else.

She joined Dhee, ETV’s dance reality show, as one of four team leaders on Dhee 10, alongside Sudigali Sudheer, Rashmi Gautam and Hemanth. When the four teams merged into two mid-season, she and Sudheer led one of them. She was back for Dhee 12, billed as Dhee Champions, this time leading a team with Hyper Aadi against Sudheer and Rashmi Gautam.

She joined Jabardasth, ETV’s sketch-comedy show, on 15 November 2018, and it is the credit the Telugu press attaches to her name most often. In May 2019 she came in to co-host Pataas 2 after Sreemukhi’s exit. She anchored Comedy Stars on Star Maa until 2021, and she has guested on Sixth Sense, Bhale Chancele and Alitho Saradaga.

In 2017 Hyderabad Times listed her among its Most Desirable Women on Television.

Anchor Varshini’s mother tongue, and the Telugu she had to learn

Her mother tongue is Tamil, and she did not grow up speaking Telugu. At school and at college she spoke English, and speaking a regional language got you impositions, lines to copy out over and over: I will not speak in my regional language. She had no Telugu-speaking friends.

Then she started working in Telugu television, where the entire job is talking. “My friends taught me Telugu,” she said. “So-called friends — what’s this, why are you saying it like that.” People laughed at the early attempts. She kept going, and now she anchors comedy in Telugu for a living, off the cuff, at speed. She puts it down to being a quick learner, which is the most she will claim for herself.

Varshini’s moonwalk

At some point the moonwalk became her signature, and she is faintly baffled by it. She had forgotten she ever did it.

“I really forgot about it,” she said. “Now if I go to any opening, people say akka, won’t you do the moonwalk?” The request follows her to store launches, award functions and festival sets, and she has decided she likes it.

Varshini Sounderajan movies list and TV shows

Films

She is also credited in Kai Raja Kai and Sri Rama Raksha.

Web series

Pelli Gola ran three seasons on Viu between 2017 and 2019, produced by Annapurna Studios, with her as Jagadamba opposite Abijeet. It brought her back after two early films went nowhere.

Television

Varshini Sounderajan’s latest movie and upcoming films

Her most recent release is Yenugu Thondam Ghatikachalam, written and directed by Ravi Babu, which went straight to ETV Win on 13 November 2025. She plays Bhavani, a housemaid who marries a 64-year-old widower played by Naresh, in a dark comedy about an inconvenient death and an insurance claim. The part is a long way from anchoring. She described the film as shot and waiting to come out when she spoke in February 2025.

No further release has been announced. Bigg Boss now accounts for the next three or four months of her calendar.

Varshini Sounderajan in Bigg Boss Telugu 10

She is in the house as one of the ten celebrity contestants of Bigg Boss Telugu 10, which premieres on Star Maa at 7 pm on Sunday 6 September 2026 and streams on JioHotstar. Nagarjuna Akkineni hosts his eighth season. The theme is Dasavatharam, ten avatars for the tenth season, and six of the sixteen contestants came in through Agnipariksha 2 rather than from the industry.

She resisted it for years.

Varshini Sounderajan’s fellow Bigg Boss Telugu 10 contestants

The other nine celebrities include Naresh Jabardasth, who has been doing skits on the show she anchors since Christmas Day 2014, Debjani Modak, the Kolkata actress Telugu audiences know as Veda from Ennenno Janmala Bandham, who learnt the language on set, and Chaithra Rai, who came to Telugu from Kannada serials and led Ashta Chamma as Swapna. From film there is Temper Vamsi, the career villain of Pushpa and Devara who took his name off a role in Temper, and Krishnudu, who led Vinayakudu and was the heavy senior in Happy Days. The six from Agnipariksha 2 include Singer Jhansi, Srishti Vyakaranam and Shalini Damera.

Why Varshini said no to Bigg Boss for years

Her name has come up on social media before nearly every recent season, and in February 2025 she explained why it never went further. The calls were real, and there were a lot of them.

“Not almost once — many times, many times,” she said. “They’re very warm, the team. Every time they’ll call and ask.” And every time she said the same thing: she genuinely did not know. “Till now I haven’t had the courage to go. I don’t even know how it would be. Because I see so many people who went and came back.”

She was also, by then, working to a different measure of ambition. Three years earlier she would have named a dream project. After having COVID, she said, the answer changed: staying alive and being happy is the bigger dream. That is the person walking into a 105-day game show.

Bigg Boss Telugu 10 voting and Varshini Sounderajan

Once nominations start in the week after launch, the official vote runs free in the JioHotstar app while that week’s window is open. Our Season 10 voting page carries each week’s nominees, the vote counts as they move and the eliminations as they happen, and you can back her in our unofficial fan poll there too.

Varshini Sounderajan’s marriage, husband and relationships

She is not married and has no husband. She was engaged once, in 2015, and the wedding never happened. She addressed the marriage rumours publicly in July 2020, and in February 2025 she described marriage as the life she had assumed she would have. “I thought I would get married. But it didn’t go like that.”

Varshini’s engagement to Arun Pawar

She got engaged to Arun Pawar, the director of Best Actors, at a private ceremony in Hyderabad on 10 May 2015. It was reported at the time under her earlier screen name, Shamili, which is why it is hard to find under the name she uses now, and why her own Wikipedia entry cites that engagement report as the source for her name.

Both said then that the wedding was being put off while they concentrated on their careers. It never happened, and neither of them has said publicly why.

Varshini Sounderajan and Hyper Aadi

She and Hyper Aadi led a team together on Dhee 12, and when she posted a birthday video for him the internet decided it had found something.

The video went up a few days after his birthday, not on it, and she conceded she had never posted anything like it for anyone else, which is what set the comments off. “He is a very, very nice person,” she said. “There’s no negative in him at all. And I want to be around people like that.” Her test for a real friend is simple: they don’t speak badly about you once you leave the room, and she believes he doesn’t. Friends, and few of them, is how she describes her place in the industry.

The cricketer link-up story

In April 2025 a sports-desk photo feature named her as cricketer Washington Sundar’s rumoured girlfriend. The headline travelled further than the text. The report itself said neither of them had confirmed a relationship, and rested the claim on “subtle interactions” and search interest rather than on anything either person had said.

Rumoured, and unconfirmed since it was first reported in April 2025. Neither Varshini nor Washington Sundar has commented on it, then or since.

Varshini Sounderajan caste

Not publicly disclosed. She has never stated a caste, and no interview of hers that we can find raises it.

Her community background is on the record, and she talks about it freely. She was born into a Tamil family in Hyderabad, Tamil is her mother tongue, and she keeps Tamil festival customs: Surya puja and kite-flying at Sankranti. Anything more specific would be an assumption drawn from her surname.

Varshini Sounderajan’s family

Father, mother and siblings

She was born into a Tamil family in Hyderabad and is the youngest of three, after her sister Soujanya and her brother Prashanth. Her parents are not public figures and she has never named them, so they are not named here.

The family did shape the early career, and she is open about it. When she started out and knew nothing, there were rules at home about which scenes she could and could not do. That changed as she got better at the work. “Now they know I can handle it,” she said. “It’s all just acting.”

Interesting facts about Varshini Sounderajan

• She started out being credited as Shamili, and the reference works still file her under that name.
• She has 2 million Instagram followers and gives almost no interviews. That is deliberate: “When I do something really big, then I’ll give interviews that make sense.”
• She was recognised in Las Vegas, a city with far fewer Indians than New Jersey or Dallas, and she was genuinely shocked. She credits Telugu television, not films.
• Her whole career is unplanned. Modelling was a hobby for pocket money after a B.Sc. in Electronics.
• Her phone holds her bank passwords, and her assistant knows all of them. Asked whether she could survive without one, she said no, and that nobody can.
• She still does festival specials for whoever asks, Star Maa or Zee, with no loyalty to a channel. “Wherever I am, that’s a festival,” she said, quoting her own line back with a straight face.
• She is a self-declared foodie who watches films in Korean and Tamil as well as Telugu, and picks comedy when she wants to switch off.
• Her advice to her younger self: “You’re doing very well. You’ll do even better.”

Varshini Sounderajan Instagram and social media accounts

All four accounts below are hers, and each one was checked before it was linked. Her YouTube channel points at the Instagram and Facebook accounts from its own link panel, the Threads handle is the same Instagram login, and the Instagram account carries the platform’s verification badge. Follower counts are a snapshot taken on 5 September 2026.

• Instagram — @varshini_sounderajan: 2 million followers, 994 posts, verified.
• YouTube — @urssvarshini: 510,000 subscribers, opened on 5 May 2021.
• Facebook — Varshini: 2.22 million page likes.
• Threads — @varshini_sounderajan: 268,000 followers.

Accounts carrying her name that none of these four link to are not hers.

Varshini Sounderajan wikipedia

Yes, she has one. There is an English Wikipedia article at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varshini_Sounderajan, and a Wikidata entry, Q49561944, which is filed under her earlier name, Shamili Sounderajan. The article is short: a paragraph of early life, a filmography table and a list of shows.

The wiki-style facts in one line: Varshini Sounderajan, earlier credited as Shamili Sounderajan, born 6 April 1994 in Hyderabad, 32, Telugu television anchor and film actress, known for Jabardasth, Dhee and Malli Modalaindi, and a celebrity contestant on Bigg Boss Telugu 10.

Varshini Sounderajan FAQ

How old is anchor Varshini Sounderajan?

She is 32. She was born on 6 April 1994 in Hyderabad.

Where is Varshini Sounderajan from?

Hyderabad, Telangana. She was born there to a Tamil family and has lived and worked in the city all her life.

What is Varshini Sounderajan known for?

She anchors Telugu television, Jabardasth on ETV and Dhee before that, and acts in films and web series. Her most recent lead role is Bhavani in Yenugu Thondam Ghatikachalam on ETV Win.

Is Varshini Sounderajan married?

No, she is unmarried. She was engaged in 2015 and the wedding never took place.

Who is Varshini Sounderajan’s husband or boyfriend?

She has no husband. Her one engagement, in May 2015, was to Arun Pawar, the director of Best Actors, and it did not end in marriage. She has not spoken publicly about a relationship since. Of the two link-up stories attached to her name, she has answered only the Hyper Aadi one, describing him as a good friend.

Which TV show is Varshini Sounderajan in?

Bigg Boss Telugu 10, from 6 September 2026 on Star Maa and JioHotstar. She also anchors Jabardasth on ETV.

What is Varshini Sounderajan’s Instagram ID?

@varshini_sounderajan, the verified account, with 2 million followers as of 5 September 2026.

More Season 10 profiles

• Chaithra Rai — television actress
• Debjani Modak — television actress
• Krishnudu — film actor
• Mukesh Gowda — television and film actor
• Naresh Jabardasth — comedian and jabardasth team leader
• Sudheer Reddy — anchor and podcast interviewer
• Temper Vamsi — film actor