I never planned to become a sound designer. Growing up in Andheri, Mumbai, I was obsessed with music — not making it, but listening to the layers inside it. The subtle tabla under a film score. The way a single violin note could change the emotional weight of an entire scene.
My journey started in 2012 when I landed an internship at a small post-production studio in Bandra. My job was making tea and labelling hard drives. But I stayed late every night, watching the senior engineers work in Pro Tools, and eventually one of them — Vikram sir — let me sit in on a Foley session for a regional thriller. I was completely hooked.
Within two years I had worked on my first feature film as a junior sound designer. The budget was tiny, the schedule was brutal, and I learned more in those four months than in any formal course I had taken. We recorded footsteps on seven different surfaces, sourced crowd ambience from the streets of Dharavi at 4 AM, and spent an entire afternoon getting the sound of a single wooden door right.
Today I run my own studio in Goregaon. We specialise in sound design for independent Hindi and regional films, documentary series, and branded content. I use a mix of field recording, synthesis, and a library I have been building for over a decade — from the clank of a local train door to the specific buzz of a Mumbai summer evening.
What drives me is this: sound is invisible, but it does half the emotional work in any film. When the audience cries or laughs or holds their breath, they rarely think about the sound — and that is exactly how it should be. My job is to disappear into the story.
If you are just starting out, my advice is simple: record everything. Buy the cheapest recorder you can afford and go outside. Every city sounds different and every sound you capture is yours.
