Sriya Lenka becomes first Indian K-pop idol
Anupam Tripathi of Squid Game fame and Baahubali actor Rana Daggubati gave a shoutout to Sriya Lenka for becoming the first K-pop idol from India.
Odhisha’a Sriya Lenka made history by becoming the first K-pop idol from India. The 18-year-old emerged as co-winner of DR Music’s global auditions to find the fifth member of the idol group Black Swan. Anupam Tripathi, an Indian origin actor who rose to fame with the Korean survival drama Squid Game, shared the news on his Instagram Story section and wrote, “great news” with a couple of emojis. Baahubali actor Rana Daggubati, too, gave a shout out to Sriya.
He shared the news on his Twitter handle and left fire emojis on the post. Sriya reposted their congratulatory posts on her Instagram Story section.
Lenka was born in Odisha and last year she was selected for the final leg of training in Seoul to become a member of Blackswan. This search for a final member of the band began after its oldest member Hyeme left the group in November 2020. The entertainment agency associated with Blackswan announced global auditions to replace her in May last year. Lenka and Gabriela Dalcin of Brazil were chosen among 4,000 applicants through a YouTube audition programme.
In an Instagram post shared by DR Music on Thursday, Lenka and Dalcin were introduced as part of the Cygnus project. The caption along the post explained, “’Cygnus’, which means a constellation of swan, is a project to discover and to train trainees to become stars like the Cygnus. Sriya and Gabi are the first generations of Cygnus, which will be introduced soon. Thank you for your interest and support. And the Cygnus project will continue in the future.”
According to a report in Odhisha Bytes earlier this year, Shreya’s training included learning the land’s dialect along with dancing and singing. The publication further informed that Shreya had been training under ‘Boogie Woogie HipHop’ 2009 winner, Madan Mohan Purty. The teenager had enrolled on Odissi class as a kid but had to discontinue it owing to a financial crisis. She later trained under Mendo Barla.
