Fame Gurukul

Fame Gurukul
Title card of "Fame Gurukul".
Genre	Reality television
Presented by	Manav Gohil, Mandira Bedi
Judges	Javed Akhtar, Shankar Mahadevan, Krishnakumar Kunnath
Country of origin	India
Original language(s)	Hindi
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	Total ??
Production
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Production company(s)	Miditech India Pvt Ltd
Release
Original network	Sony TV
Picture format	720i (SDTV)
Original release	27 June 2005 – 2005

Fame Gurukul was an Indian prime-time reality show on Sony Entertainment Television (India) which premiered on 27 June 2005. The program was produced by the same production house of Indian Idol. The concept of the show was to select a pair of India's best singers/performers.

It is based on the Spanish / French Operación Triunfo / Star Academy format of Endemol, better known in English under the UK title Fame Academy; in Indian terms, it was essentially a mixture of Indian Idol and Big Brother TV series. The show started out with 16 contestants living in a musical performance academy (Gurukul). Every week (normally) one contestant was voted out of the show, and so on until two will remained in the end, who received various prizes (recording contracts, cars, etc.).

The Fame Gurukul Fame Jodi received a Rs.1 crore music contract from Sony in addition to a Maruti Alto car each.

Deepika Mehta

Occasionally a celebrity judge was called on the show to comment on the performances and to inspire the singers. The following was a list of special judges who appeared on Fame Gurukul:

On 20 October 2005, the final show of Fame Gurukul was broadcast in which the final three contestants - Qazi Touqeer, Rex D'Souza and Ruprekha Banerjee battled it for the top spots. After much waiting and various shows in between, the results were finally announced. Qazi Touqeer, the favourite was one of the winners, while Ruprekha Banerjee made up the pair with him.