Saregamapa was formerly known as Saregama, before Shaan came in at the spot of an achor. Saregama debuted on May 1 1995, hosted by Sonu Nigam and the show went onto become a smash hit nation-wide.It was 1999, when Saregama took a break, but came back in 1999 itself with new hosts in the form of Ayaan Ali and Amaan Ali. This session went on till 2001.
The concept of elimination process then was very different from what we see now in Saregamapa. Each week, a contestant would challenge the previous week's winning contestant through various different rounds such as singing a song from their own choice, singing a song of the judge's choice etc. The contestant who got the most points at the end of the episode would go ahead into. In total, there were usually four contestants per episode, two girls and two boys. The main goal of the contestants was to get a streak of continuous wins each week from which if they were successful would be given a break into the musical industry in India.
After a hiatus, Saregama returned back in 2002, with its brand name as ‘Saregamapa” and Shaan as the anchor. It was with Challenge 2005, that the old format was scraped off and the public voting system was introduced.
Saregama was a platform from where we have got some talented singer. And now some of them are well established in bollywood industry. The most notable contestants are:
Shreya Ghoshal-2000
Kunal Ganjawala-1997-98
Shekhar Ravjiani
Sanjeevani Bhelande-1995
Avdhoot Gupte
Vijay Prakash
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