Shruti Hegde is a perfect example of beauty with brains. Imagine working as a doctor for 36 hours straight and showing up the next day as an epitome of beauty, that’s what beauty queen Shruti Hegde has been doing since 2018. Almost a month ago, Shruti managed to pull the title of India’s first Miss Universal Petite 2024. Hard work never fails to pay off.
The beauty pagent is held in florida in the US every year. “It was not easy for sure. I realised that being a doctor is a lot more work than I initially thought. Yes, it becomes too much at times. But I don’t think I will be choosing one over the other. Instead, I want to find a balance between both,” Hegde says to PTI. “I am always wanting to do new things, and I guess it is almost every small-town girl’s dream – to be a beauty queen. So, I thought I’ll just give it a try. It helped that I had a mother who is keener than me that I should do what I want to do,” she added. With that she ended up signing for Miss Dharwad contest in 2018. Her win came in unexpectedly and that was when things took a serious turn.
“During the course of the contest, I realized that I was learning a lot of life lessons too – the kind that will help me be a better person and be better equipped to tackle any kind of situation. So, I decided to give my all to it, and see where it took me,” said Hegde. She’s currently working as an intern with a hospital at tumakuru which is around 30km away from Bengaluru.
But then she faced another obstacle. Not only did a small town like Hubballi lack the necessary resources for all the preparations required to become a beauty queen, but she also had to take a hiatus to handle a medical emergency. She said “In 2019, I was diagnosed with benign ovarian and uterine tumors and had to undergo open surgery. This ate up two years of my life – 2019 and 2020 – as I recuperated. I thought that was the end of my pageantry career for a while. Again, my mother wouldn’t let me off so easily. She stood behind me like a rock.”
But all that didn’t let her give up on her dream that easily, she took classes from all over India for which she had to travel a lot. “There’s so much to it – diction, clothing, walking… And initially, you will have to spend for all that, in lakhs and lakhs. But by now nothing could stop me, I wanted to go all the way,” Hegde said.
Shruti Hegde financial burden lightened when she won a big title- The Second runner Up Of Miss Asia International India 2023. “I started getting sponsors for my clothes and stuff. Which was a relief because earlier I had only a couple of outfits that I was forced to wear to different pageantries,” said Hegde. This opened the doors to her acting career as well.
Hegde said “Again, I ventured into it cautiously. Started first with serials. But the film that I just finished shooting for, ‘Sharanara Shakti’, made me realise a film career may not be a bad thing.”
Shruti told “I realised that the Kannada film industry is again opening itself, making it possible for films like ‘Sharanara Shakti’. It’s perhaps the best time to be an actor here. I have now decided to take that plunge and see where it goes.”
Shruti Hegde is reportedly filming for ‘Jamundata’, a film that focuses on the relationship between a father and son.
