Pure Steel

Miss Supranational 2016 Srinidhi Shetty is a former engineer who was once deemed too overweight to walk the ramp. She tells Nikita Sawant how she turned everything around.

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Mangalore girl Srinidhi Shetty had big dreams growing up. As a child, she was bent on being either a doctor or an astronaut, but her ambitions changed as she got older. Shetty worked as a software engineer for a while before realising that it was time to change course again. This time, she turned her focus to modelling and that’s when the world sat up and took notice of her. First, when she was crowned first runner-up at the Yamaha Fascino Miss Diva 2016, and then when she became Miss Supranational 2016. Now, as she makes her foray into the world of cinema, we talk to her about all the sharp turns her career has taken and how they’ve shaped her.

How would you sum up your Miss Supranational 2016 journey?

I had very little time to prepare for Miss Supranational. Yamaha Fascino Miss Diva happened in October, and I had to leave for Miss Supranational in November. I underwent a kind of crash course on hair, makeup, etiquette… just about everything in one month. And the night I won Miss Supranational was so surreal. I can go on talking about my journey, but if I had to sum it up, I would say, I just feel so blessed. And this wouldn’t have been possible without my family’s support. And, of course, the credit goes to my team as well.I don’t think they even got time to sleep through it all.

What would you say has been the best thing about the Miss Supranational experience?

Of course, winning the pageant was the best thing (