America hunts for the next Bollywood nightingale

An American lucky enough to win a Bollywood karaoke contest in a Susan Boyle-like breakout moment will be sponsored by US insurance giant State Farm to sing and possibly dance on-screen in an upcoming Hindi film in Mumbai.

"With Bollywood at the heart of South Asian entertainment here in the US, we are thrilled to sponsor this competition that gives people a chance to realise their dreams," said Mark Gibson, assistant vice-president of advertising at State Farm.

Contestants can enter either by taking part in live auditions in Edison, Fremont, and Artesia on July 11 and 12 or by uploading a video to www.bollystar2009.com.

Saavan, which is the world's largest digital distributor of Hindi film content, is hosting the contest and will ensure that the winner gets screen time singing in a Hindi film movie shot in Mumbai.

"We can't wait to see the submissions. Who knows? Maybe we will find the next Sonu Nigam or Sunidhi Chauhan," said Paramdeep Singh, co-founder and managing director of Saavan.

"We're really opening up an amazing opportunity for an aspiring singer," said Singh. The winner will be selected online by fans of Hindi films in the US.

Bloomington-based State Farm, which is the leading insurer of homes in the US, is clearly targeting Hindi film-crazy Indian Americans and South Asians through this contest although US basement bhangra parties pack a very eclectic American crowd.

American marketing executives say they like to lavish attention on the two-million-strong Indian American community as it has the highest per capita income of all immigrant groups in the US. "The buying power of the 45 million Latinos in the US market is less than that of the Indian Americans by about $250 billion, so who should you really pay attention to if you are a marketer?" former Goldman Sachs banker turned entrepreneur Marcus Stuart had once told DNA.

The State Farm-Bollywood contest is also likely to attract talent from US college students who take inter-college Hindi film-style song-and-dance competitions very seriously. Dance crews from Brown, Johns Hopkins, Rutgers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, Temple, and Columbia often start practising new grooves in September for fierce Bollywood dance-offs in the winter and early spring.