“Shiksha Mandal” actor Shivaani Singh expresses, “I am thrilled and grateful that the audience is loving my performance”!

#ShivaaniSingh, who’s known for her role in #YeMantramVesave, opposite #VijayDeverakonda, recently made her #OTT Debut with MX Player’s #ShikhaMandal as #ShivaaniDubey, a successful journalist. The web series also stars #GauharKhan, #GulshanDevaiah and #PavanRajMalhotra.

Talking about her debut, the actress says, “I am playing the character of a successful journalist, a respected public figure in the media circle, Shivaani, who belongs to an affluent family. This character was sweetly challenging as I had to appear as someone who was a competitive professional at the same time it required me to carry it with softness when it came to her personal life with Aditya (Gulshan Devaiah) and his family and I am thrilled and grateful that the audience is loving my performance and the character.

I owe this to our director Syed Ahmad Afzal who wrote Shivaani Dubey with such finesse and picked me to play it. For this, I’ll always be grateful to him. It was such a breeze to work with Gulshan Devaiah and Gauahar Khan. Gulshan made it at home for me and he is easily one of the kindest people I have known. Also, Gauahar is such an easy person to talk to, as soon as we met we bonded and in our first scene together we bonded over our uncontrollable giggles.

‘Shiksha Mandal’ sheds light on how the education mafias got many children admitted by making fake candidates take the medical entrance exam. The narrative is multi-layered, showing corruption, fraud, cheating, and criminal conspiracy that affects vulnerable students in India.

The story is set in the cities of Madhya Pradesh, particularly Bhopal and Indore, where the pressure on the youth to clear medical entrance tests and compete with one another is probably far more than what students face in urban cities. This nine-part series opens with Aditya Rai (Gulshan Devaiah), who owns a coaching centre for medical students, and his sister Vidya Rai (Iram Badar Khan), the topper at his institute. Despite this, she is pretty anxious about her entrance test result. On the announcement day, Vidya is abducted, and her friend Rahul Somani (Gaurav Singh), the son of a prominent politician, is murdered. Why is this happening, what is the connection, and who is to blame? All answers are hidden throughout the show.