The singer with a silky voice - Udit Narayan Jha, better known as Udit Narayan – reigned over the music industry in his time. Born in village Bhardaha, in Saptari District, Nepal on 1 December, 1960, he completed his schooling from P B School, Rajbiraj, Nepal and then moved to acquire his intermediate from Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus, mostly known as RR campus in Kathmandu.

Narayan began his career by singing in different languages including Nepali, Maithili, and Bhojpuri in Nepal itself. Narayan sung folk songs for Radio Nepal in the early 1970s. In 1978, he moved to Mumbai on a music scholarship and trained in Indian classical music for six years at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

He got his first break in the year 1980, when noted music director Rajesh Roshan offered him a chance to sing in the movie Unees Bees (1980). Here, he got the golden opportunity to sing with his inspiration, the legendary Mohammed Rafi. However, after this, he had to wait till 1988 to get a real taste of success. The Hindi film Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988) had songs that became instant hits due to Narayan’s melodious voice, and industry bigwigs took notice of the young singer.

Narayan then became one of the leading playback singers in Hindi cinema. His stardom in India brought him recognition in the Nepalese film industry as well and he got work there too. In fact, he even acted in some Nepalese films including Kusume Rumal (1985), but failed to achieve much success.

Throughout the 1990s, he was one of the most successful singers in India. He has worked with well-known musicians in the industry including Rajesh Roshan, Rahul Dev Burman, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Anu Malik, Jagjit Singh, Jatin Lalit, Kalyanji-Anandji, Bappi Lahiri, Vishal Bhardwaj, A R Rahman, Nadeem-Shravan, Shankar Mahadevan, Himesh Reshammiya, Pritam Chakraborty, Vishal-Shekhar and many more. He also sang in several other Indian languages like Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, Tamil, English and Malayalam.

In his first private Nepalese album Upahaar (2004), he sang duet songs with his wife Deepa Jha. Apart from singing in the films, Narayan was also one of the judges of Waar Pariwaar, a reality show on Sony TV.

He has been awarded the Padma Shri in 2009 as well as the Padma Bhushan in 2016, by the Government of India, for his significant contribution to Indian music.

He most recently lent his voice to the film Dear vs Bear (2014).