Artist photos: Rolling Stone India, Future 25 (2025)
India's independent music scene isn't waiting for permission anymore. Artists are building six-figure streaming numbers out of bedrooms in Noida, turning Marathi rap into a Spinnin' Records single, and getting Nas's label to co-sign a Delhi hip-hop imprint — all without a major label writing the first check. Rolling Stone India spent 2025 tracking the names doing this most convincingly and published them as the "Future 25." We pulled that list together into one guide, added the context, and built it for anyone trying to understand where Indian music is actually headed in 2026 — fans, A&Rs, festival bookers, and the artists themselves.
This is part of kredl's ongoing effort to map India's creative economy from the ground up. If you're a musician, producer, or collaborator trying to find your footing in this scene, these 25 names are a good place to start paying attention.
Key takeaways
- All 25 artists here come from Rolling Stone India's Future 25 (April 2025), spanning pop, Punjabi music, hip-hop, electronic, indie, and regional-language scenes
- Several broke out through platform virality rather than label backing — Akshath's "Nadaaniyan" topped Spotify's Global Viral chart and crossed 150M YouTube views; Rishi Roy's breakout track cost ₹1,500 to distribute
- International crossover is a recurring theme: Natania features alongside Cardi B and DJ Khaled on the "Smurfs" soundtrack; Tsumyoki won Best Indian Local Act at the 2023 MTV EMAs; Shreyas Sagvekar's "Taambdi Chaamdi" got picked up by Dutch label Spinnin' Records and remixed by KSHMR
- Regional-language music is a major growth lane — Marathi rap (Shreyas Sagvekar), Tamil pop (Sai Abhyankkar), and Northeast hip-hop (Reble) are all producing artists with national reach
- Live performance remains a key discovery mechanism — Hashbass headlined the debut Lollapalooza India, and Adi & Dishaan broke out through their own Lollapalooza India set
Discover and connect with India's emerging music talent. kredl →
The Future 25: 2026's Artists to Watch
1. Gini — Indie-Pop (Mumbai)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Gini makes intimate, minimalist indie-pop built on soft vocals and gentle melodies — music that, as Rolling Stone put it, "doesn't try to be larger than life, it tries to be as large as one life can be." Her song "Ansuna" landed her on Spotify Radar and a Times Square billboard, and she followed it with "The Cozy Tour," an independent eight-city run of living-room-style shows built around emotional connection instead of spectacle. She was Rolling Stone India's Future of Music cover artist for 2025.
Read more: How Gini built a career on intimacy →
2. Akshath Acharya — I-Pop (India)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Akshath writes tender, synth-driven ballads about young love and lost connection. His 2024 track "Nadaaniyan" topped Spotify's Global Viral chart and has crossed 150 million YouTube views, making him one of the clearest breakout faces of India's I-pop movement — a genre built on emotionally direct, internationally-produced Hindi pop.
Read more: How Akshath Acharya built a 150M-view breakout →
3. Talwiinder — Punjabi R&B / Drill (Punjab / San Francisco)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Born in Tarn Taran, Punjab and now based in San Francisco, Talwiinder blends R&B, synth-pop, drill, and lo-fi into a sound Rolling Stone called "a supernova in the making." Early features on Hasan Raheem's "Wishes" and Yashraj's "Dhundala" launched him into prominence, and his debut album "Misfit" pulls together collaborators across that same cross-border Punjabi music network.
Read more: How Talwiinder built a career from behind a mask →
4. Hashbass — Genre-Blending Bass and Production (Mumbai / Bengaluru / Delhi)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Hashbass (Harshit Misra) is a beatsmith-bassist whose production moves fluidly between melodic rap, folk, and electronic grooves. He headlined the debut Lollapalooza India in January 2023 with a collaborative live set, and in April 2025 released "House of Hashbass, Vol. 1" — an 11-track mixtape spanning rap, Punjabi pop, and singer-songwriter features.
Read more: How Hashbass went from session player to Lollapalooza →
5. Wazir Patar — Punjabi Hip-Hop (Punjab)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Wazir Patar fuses hip-hop with Punjabi soul and traditional instrumentation, deliberately steering away from the genre's usual glorification of money and excess. He started as a music video director before moving to production and recording, and is currently restoring a classic Mercedes W124 into "WZR TANK" — a documentary-meets-EP project built around cultural pride and craft.
Read more: How Wazir Patar built a movement from behind the board →
6. Siddharth Pandit — Indian-Western Classical Composition (Jaipur)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Pandit is a composer and pianist who describes himself as living "at that bridge between Indian and Western music." He's scored for "Uri: The Surgical Strike" and season two of "Bandish Bandits," but it's his independent "Azaad Sangeet" album series — moving from Chopin to thumri inside the same project — that he credits with finding his real artistic voice.
Read more: How Siddharth Pandit built a career between two traditions →
Find composers, session musicians, and collaborators for your next project. kredl →
7. Sejal Kumar — Dreamy Pop (India)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Sejal built a 1.47-million-strong YouTube following as a content creator before "Aisi Hun" — written for a 2020 YouTube Creators for Change campaign with the Obama Foundation — crossed a million views in a week and pulled her toward music full-time. Her sound blends mellow synths and acoustic textures with journal-like lyrics, in the lineage of Troye Sivan and Conan Gray.
Read more: How Sejal Kumar built a music career from YouTube →
8. Adi & Dishaan — Hip-Hop / R&B / Soul (Mumbai)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
The duo met at Mumbai's Antisocial club and built their sound — "soulful swagger and honey-dipped hooks" — during sessions in Lonavala. Their debut album "Good Things Take Time" broke through on the strength of live shows, including a Lollapalooza India set where, as they put it, the crowd sang loud enough that "it was hard to hear ourselves on stage."
Read more: How Adi & Dishaan turned a chance meeting into an album →
9. Natania — Global Pop / Hip-Hop (Mumbai-born, Los Angeles-based)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Natania writes global pop and hip-hop that folds in South Asian influences, and her career has already crossed into rooms most Indian artists don't reach — a feature on "Higher Love" for the "Smurfs" movie soundtrack alongside Cardi B and DJ Khaled, songwriting credits for Netflix soundtracks, and collaborations with Nick Jonas and J Balvin after signing with Roc Nation and Desi Trill.
Read more: How Natania built a songwriting career from Mumbai to LA →
10. Raga — Hindi Hip-Hop (East Delhi)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Raga raps in a gravelly, raspy register that turns street narratives personal and vulnerable rather than performative. Out of East Delhi's Jamnapaar area, he served as a Squad Boss (mentor) on MTV Hustle Season 4 and has racked up 28 collaborative features, with tracks like "Shehar" and "Kheench Maari" cementing him as one of the more assertive voices in the current Hindi hip-hop wave.
Read more: How Raga built a rap career from East Delhi to Def Jam →
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11. Bombay The Artist — Punjabi Folk x Electronic (Mumbai)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Preeti Singhania — Bombay The Artist — blends Punjabi folk with drum-and-bass and electronic production into cinematic, emotionally raw songs about heartbreak, family pressure, and social justice. She's said a Dua Lipa concert convinced her she could "sing and perform like that, for Indians, in India." She now draws over half a million monthly Spotify listeners.
Read more: How Bombay The Artist turned rejection into a sound of her own →
12. Taaruk Raina — Indie Pop (India)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Nicknamed the "honorary sadboi of the indie pop scene," Taaruk pairs atmospheric production with unusually vulnerable songwriting. "Kho Gaye," from the "Mismatched" Season 2 soundtrack, landed him on Apple Music's Top 100: India chart, and his independent single "Narazi" has since crossed 10 million Spotify streams on its own.
Read more: How Taaruk Raina built a career where acting and music won't stay separate →
13. Mary Ann Alexander — R&B / Pop (Bengaluru)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Mary Ann sings smooth, bluesy R&B in the vein of Sid Sriram. Her break came almost by accident — filmmaker T.K. Rajeev Kumar discovered a song she'd written at 15 and featured it in the 2021 Malayalam film "Kolambi." More recently, unreleased song snippets she's posted to Instagram Reels have picked up millions of views on their own.
Read more: How Mary Ann Alexander turned studio-kid roots into India's most distinct R&B voice →
Quick stat: India generated 235.5 billion on-demand audio and video streams in the first half of 2025 alone — the world's #2 streaming market behind the United States. (Music Ally, citing IMI data, December 2025)
Connect with independent artists building careers outside the traditional label system. kredl →
14. Baalti — South Asian Bass / Dance (India / US)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Jaiveer Singh and Mihir Chauhan make bass-heavy dance music out of Bengali disco, Hindustani classical, and Gujarati folk source material, turned into abstract electronic forms. Their debut EP reworked classics — including pieces associated with Ustad Zakir Hussain — into lo-fi house, establishing them as producers actively digging into "hidden music subcultures" most Indian electronic acts skip past.
Read more: How Baalti turned Bengali disco and UK bass into a sound nobody else was making →
15. Sai Abhyankkar — Tamil Pop (South India)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
The son of playback singers Tippu and Harini, Sai Abhyankkar became "Tamil pop's biggest hitmaker" off just three released songs — "Katchi Sera" and "Aasa Kooda" (2024) built the momentum, and "Sithira Puthiri" (2025) confirmed it. His production style folds club-ready arrangements and cinematic touches into a sound that's distinctly modern while staying rooted in Tamil music's melodic instincts.
Read more: How Sai Abhyankkar became Tamil pop's biggest hitmaker with just three songs →
16. Maahi — I-Pop (India)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
The son of playback singer Shaan, Maahi combines classical training with influences ranging from Justin Bieber to Arijit Singh. At 19, his collaboration with producer Paradox, "Dil Behkaaye," gave him his first real foothold in India's I-pop scene — a genre he sees as part of a broader push toward globally competitive Hindi pop.
Read more: How Maahi is building an I-pop career out from under a famous last name →
The Complete Guide to Building an Independent Music Career in India
17. The Siege — Introspective Hip-Hop (Mumbai / Mira Road)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
The Siege writes layered, socially conscious hip-hop without theatrics — "unfiltered stories from the ground up." His biggest moment so far wasn't a chart placement: it was performing at GullyFest 2024 with his mother in the audience for the first time. Tracks like "Kabhi Na Mili" and "Ek Din" build out of everyday observation rather than persona.
Read more: How The Siege built a rap career out of refusing to perform a persona →
18. Tsumyoki — English Hip-Hop (Goa)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Nathan Mendes — Tsumyoki — raps in English out of Goa, working with his crew Goa Trap Culture in a scene most of the industry still treats skeptically. He signed to Divine's Gully Gang in 2021 and won Best Indian Local Act at the 2023 MTV European Music Awards, and continues building genre-blending, atmosphere-first records like "Want It All" with MC Square and the "Housephull" EP.
19. Sudan — Experimental Electronic / Ambient (Mumbai)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
After years producing for other independent musicians, Sudan stepped out as a solo artist with the 2024 debut album "Sudan?" — instrumental, layered, and composed for live performance rather than conventional song structure. He launched it at antiSOCIAL in Mumbai with a set built specifically around live instrumentation.
Read more: How Sudan spent years producing for everyone else before making an album of his own →
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20. Kalbaisakhi — Electronic / Bass / South Asian Fusion (Delhi)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Vibhu Singh makes chaotic, textured electronic music out of house, hip-hop, UK bass, and South Asian sound sources — music built, as he describes it, to "shake you up, leave you lighter." Delhi-rooted but trained in London under UK scene figures Gaia and Papa Nugs, his "Tunnels" EP has crossed a million streams with support from UK collective Daytimers and airtime on Boiler Room and BBC Radio.
Read more: How Kalbaisakhi turned a broken lockdown routine into a genre-blurring DJ career →
21. Josh Brar — Punjabi Music (Punjab)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
The son of veteran Punjabi artist Raj Brar, Josh writes emotionally direct music that blends traditional and contemporary Punjabi sounds without leaning on excess. His breakout single, "Tere Bina Na Guzara E," picked up millions of streams and heavy social sharing — and he's been vocal about wanting Indian music's future to be one "where boundaries between genres continue to blur."
Read more: How Josh Brar found his voice in the silence his father left behind →
22. Shreyas Sagvekar — Marathi Rap (Pune-bred, Mumbai-based)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Shreyas built his following through grassroots moves like intimate living-room listening sessions before "Taambdi Chaamdi," his 2024 collaboration with producer Kratex, turned into a genuine crossover hit — picked up by Dutch label Spinnin' Records and remixed by KSHMR for a set at Ultra Music Festival. He's one of the clearest proof points that Marathi-language rap can travel internationally.
Quick stat: India's independent music release volume grew 9.3 times between 2020 and 2025 — the infrastructure behind stories like this didn't exist at this scale five years ago. (TuneCore India Five-Year Report, June 2025)
Read more: How Shreyas Sagvekar took Marathi rap from a Pune living room to a global dancefloor →
23. Yung Sammy — Hindi / Haryanvi / English Rap (Noida)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Born in Nigeria and raised in the Delhi NCR region, Yung Sammy raps across Hindi, Haryanvi, and English — a combination that's rare even in India's increasingly multilingual hip-hop scene. His 2023 track "4×4" built enough traction to get him signed to Desi Trill (which has a global partnership with Universal Music), followed by an appearance on "Fire In The Booth" and a shared stage with 21 Savage at the Indian Sneaker Festival in early 2025.
Read more: How Yung Sammy turned a Noida setback into a global rap launchpad →
24. Reble — Rap (Meghalaya)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Born and raised in Meghalaya, Reble raps with an experimental flow shaped by Eminem, Biggie, and André 3000, shifting personas across her catalogue. She's been explicit about the stakes for her: putting out work strong enough to represent Northeastern India in Indian hip-hop on merit, not as a token regional entry.
Read more: How Reble built a Meghalaya rap career on her own terms →
25. Rishi Roy — Indie (India)
Photo: Rolling Stone India
Rishi Roy makes raw, melancholic, occasionally spiritual indie music with no label backing. An early track he paid roughly ₹1,500 to distribute went viral — a moment he's described as the validation that "changed everything" and proof that an independent artist in India doesn't need institutional money to find an audience.
Read more: How Rishi Roy built an independent indie music career →
Why This List Matters for India's Music Industry
What connects these 25 artists isn't a sound — it's a route. None of them waited for a major label to discover them first. Gini toured living rooms. Raga won a TV talent competition. Rishi Roy spent ₹1,500 on distribution. Shreyas Sagvekar hosted listening sessions in his own living room before a Dutch label found "Taambdi Chaamdi." The infrastructure that makes this possible — streaming platforms, direct distribution, social virality, festival stages like Lollapalooza India — is relatively new to India, and this list is a snapshot of what artists are doing with it.
It also shows how fast India's genre map is expanding past Bollywood and mainstream Punjabi pop. Marathi rap, Tamil pop, Northeast hip-hop, Goan English rap, and Hindustani-classical-meets-house are all producing artists with real national and international reach in the same 12-month window.
Discover, connect, and collaborate with India's next generation of creative talent. kredl →
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Rolling Stone India's Future 25 list?
The Future 25 is Rolling Stone India's annual list of emerging musicians the publication considers most likely to shape the country's sound going forward. The 2025 edition, published in April 2025, featured Gini as its cover artist alongside 24 other artists spanning pop, hip-hop, Punjabi music, electronic, and regional-language scenes.
Who are some Indian artists to watch in 2026?
Based on the Future 25 list, names worth following into 2026 include Gini (indie-pop), Akshath Acharya (I-pop), Talwiinder (Punjabi R&B), Shreyas Sagvekar (Marathi rap), Sai Abhyankkar (Tamil pop), Natania (global pop/hip-hop), and Tsumyoki (English hip-hop) — each already showing crossover momentum beyond their home scene.
How do independent Indian artists usually get discovered?
The paths vary but cluster around a few patterns: viral moments on streaming platforms or Instagram Reels (Akshath, Rishi Roy), live performances at festivals like Lollapalooza India (Hashbass, Adi & Dishaan), and pickups from international labels or sync placements (Shreyas Sagvekar's Spinnin' Records deal, Natania's Roc Nation signing). Very few of the artists on this list were discovered through a traditional demo-to-label pipeline.
Is India's independent music scene actually growing?
Yes. India's independent music release volume grew 9.3 times between 2020 and 2025, and the country generated 235.5 billion on-demand audio and video streams in just the first half of 2025 — the second-largest streaming market in the world after the United States. The Future 25 artists are direct beneficiaries of that infrastructure growth.
Where can I find or connect with emerging Indian music artists?
Beyond following individual artists on streaming platforms, kredl is built specifically to help musicians, producers, and other creative professionals in India find each other — whether you're an artist looking for a collaborator, a label scouting talent, or a festival booking new names.
Build your profile and get discovered by the people building India's music industry. kredl →