Shashwat Sachdev

Jaipur-born composer Shashwat Sachdev has established himself as one of Hindi cinema’s most distinctive voices, being equally fluent in the visceral language of film scores and the nuanced world of independent music production. Sachdev began his musical education aged three, training in Hindustani Classical vocals under Ustad Ramzan Khan, a sarangi exponent of the Sikar gharana, before adding Western Classical piano during his school years. He later relocated to Hollywood in 2011, working alongside Grammy Award-winner Tony Maserati and contributing to sessions with artists including Beyoncé and Mariah Carey. When he returned to India in 2016, it was in pursuit of a more personal creative vision. Sachdev’s Bollywood debut came with Phillauri (2017), featuring the crowd-pulling tracks “Dum Dum” and “Sahiba”. But it was his sweeping, adrenaline-soaked and percussion-driven score for Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) that announced him as a composer of uncommon force, earning him a National Film Award for Best Music Direction. In 2025, he became the first Indian composer to co-create with Hans Zimmer, also collaborating with Emmy-winning composer James Everingham on the title theme for the BBC crime thriller Virdee. Later that year, his packed soundtrack for Dhurandhar made him a household name, traversing airy funk and hip-hop, flipping classic Bollywood songs and delivering one of the catchiest title tracks of recent times.