Santosh Hariharan is an Indian playback singer and has been a contestant of singing reality shows. He was born on 5 September 1987 and is 29 years old presently. He was born and brought up in Chennai, India. His hometown is in Palghat. He started his schooling from Chimaya Vidyalaya, Hyderabad and went to St. Joseph Higher Secondary School, Cuddalore to complete his 10+2 education. Santosh pursued Biotechnology from SRM University of Ramapuram, Chennai. He is an alumnus of Soundtech Media Institute of Audio Technology. He shifted to Mumbai after his musical career started attaining success. The languages spoken by him are Tamil, Telugu, Kanadda and, English.
Before participating in the reality show, 'Indian Idol Season 9', he was already a playback singer in the Tamil Film Industry. He cleared the audition round of India Idol by impressing the judges Farah Khan and Sonu Nigam and was expected to reach till the top 5. This could not happen due to his early eliminations and huge competition. In 2012, he appeared in a Tamil singing reality show 'Airtel Super Singer' on Vijay TV. During the second season of the show, Santosh could not qualify and was out of the show at an early stage due to lack of exposure and practice of Indian Classical music. He got eliminated by the judges in the third season again, but his passion for music was quite high this time and he came back with the help of wild card entry in the show.