Mahalakshmi Iyer is an Indian Tamil playback singer, best known for her Hindi and Tamil songs. Mahalakshmi comes from a musical family. Her mother is a Carnatic classical singer. She began learning Hindustani music at an early age as did her three sisters, Kalpana, Padmini and Shobha. She has sung in many Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, Kannada and Malayalam. Mahalakshmi made her singing debut with A. R. Rahman. Since then she has sung over a thousand songs in films, serials, jingles and original albums.