Manasi Parekh

In 2003 she was one of eight finalists on the second season of Channel V's Popstars, in the same intake as Ayushmann Khurrana. The acting followed: Kitni Mast Hai Zindagi in 2004, Chandini in Star One's India Calling from 2005, a win on Zee TV's Star Ya Rockstar, then Gulaal on Star Plus across 2010 and 2011 and Maya in Sumit Sambhal Lega across 2015 and 2016. In between she took a Tamil film, Leelai, in 2012 and played Vicky Kaushal's sister in Uri: The Surgical Strike in 2019.

Fourteen years of continuous work, roughly thirty television titles, and not one of them made her a name a stranger could place. Hindi television is an industry that will employ you forever and never make you the reason anyone tuned in. She was permanently castable and permanently replaceable, which are the same sentence written from two sides.

In 2019 she produced a Gujarati web series, Do Not Disturb, for MX Player, and acted in it. In 2020 she made her Gujarati film debut with Golkeri, a remake of the Marathi film Muramba, and the filmography line for it does not read actress. It reads: also producer. That is the hinge. Nobody offered her a Gujarati career. She underwrote one.

Golkeri did a reported Rs 9 crore and then the pandemic closed the cinemas on it. Judged as a business decision in 2020 it was a bad one. Judged as a proof of concept, it was the only thing that mattered, because it established that she could raise money in a language whose entire annual box office at the time was smaller than a single mid-size Hindi release.

Kutch Express arrived in 2023, directed by Viral Shah, with Ratna Pathak Shah and Darsheel Safary in the cast, dialogue by Raam Mori and a Sachin-Jigar score. She plays Monghi. It was produced by her and Parthiv Gohil.

At the 70th National Film Awards the film took three prizes. Best Actress went to her, shared with Nithya Menen for the Tamil film Thiruchitrambalam, making her the first Gujarati actress to hold that citation. Best Feature Film Promoting National, Social and Environmental Values went to the film, and the official table names the producer as Soul Sutra LLP. Best Costume Design went to Niki Joshi. An actor winning a National Award is a career event. An actor whose company is separately named in the same year's table for the same film is a structural event, and India's regional cinemas have produced very few of them.

The obvious move after a National Award is a Mumbai relaunch. She commissioned instead. Jhamkudi, a horror comedy written by Heath Bhatt and directed by Umang Vyas, came in 2024 and did a reported Rs 19 to 25 crore. Shubhchintak followed in 2025. Neither is a repeat of Kutch Express and neither is a repeat of the other.

Then came the number nobody in the industry saw arriving. Laalo: Krishna Sada Sahaayate, released in October 2025, opened weakly, survived on word of mouth from its third week, and ended on a reported Rs 120 crore worldwide, the largest figure any Gujarati film has posted and the first to pass Rs 100 crore. Soul Sutra is one of its co-producers. She is not in the cast. The National Award proved she could act. Laalo proved the banner was never a vanity project.