Manish Borundia

Manish Borundia is an Indian actor and model who has appeared in lead and supporting roles in Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and Telugu films. He has done around 95 ad films and been a brand ambassador for Sprite. He has done few music albums and gained popularity for a Malayalam music album.

Career Born and brought up in Chennai, Manish began a modelling career while managing his father's business and regularly appeared in commercials and music videos. He became acquainted with Ajith Kumar during their time as models, and often visited the actor during his film shoots. Ajith requested Manish to play a minor acting role in Amarkkalam (1999) after the original actor did not turn up, and thus Manish made his first on-screen appearance. In the early 2000s, Manish continued to portray supporting roles in Tamil films, often as the lead actor's friends, and notably appeared in S. J. Surya's Kushi (2000), Saran's Parthen Rasithen (2000), Gautham Vasudev Menon's Minnale (2001) and Jeeva's 12B (2001).

Manish then signed on to appear in the lead role of P. C. Sreeram's Vaanam Vasappadum (2004) and was attached to the project for six months, before being dropped due to his strong Hindi accent. The role was eventually taken by Karthik Kumar. Manish starred in his first lead role through the Kannada film Jootata (2005), appearing alongside Dhyan and Richa Pallod. For the project, he took up the stage name of Akash, though the film did not perform well commercially and received negative reviews from critics. His second Kannada film, Nannusire, also under performed commercially but Manish's role was described as "short, sweet and attractive." He also portrayed a character in Arjun's Tamil film, Madrasi (2006). As his acting career failed to take off, Manish took up a job in Hong Kong before moving to Bengaluru to continue looking after his family's jewellery business.

Filmography YearFilmRoleLanguageNotes 1999 Amarkkalam Kishen Tamil 2000 Kushi Shiva's friend Tamil Parthen Rasithen Sarika's brother Tamil 2001 Minnale Manish Tamil Kushi Siddhu's friend Telugu 12B Shakti's coworker Tamil Uncredited role 2005 Jootata Vicky Kannada 2006 Madrasi Raja Tamil 2008 Nannusire Harsha Kannada 2019 Mission Mangal Kaushal Saini Hindi