Ankita Kaur Gora was fifteen years old when she decided her future would not follow the conventional script. Fresh off clearing her 10th board exams in Pune, she walked her first runway show — the youngest model on set — and never looked back. More than a decade later, she has become one of the recognisable faces in Punjabi music videos, all while juggling a full-time retail job and a growing slate of music video projects, thousands of kilometres from home, in Toronto, Canada. Born and raised in Pune to Punjabi parents — her father Lakhbinder Singh, a finance manager based in Hong Kong, and her mother Surjeet Kaur, who hails from Amritsar — Ankita grew up with modeling as her clearest passion, even as she pursued a parallel, more conventional path: a BBA at Ness Wadia College and preparation for her Chartered Accountancy entrance exams. “These are two completely opposite things,” she recalls her parents telling her, torn between supporting her ambition and worrying, like most protective Indian parents, about the uncertainty of the entertainment industry. That uncertainty didn’t last long. When Ankita won her first pageant title, Miss Pune, everything changed. “That was the day that changed everything,” she says. Her mother, who had accompanied her throughout the pageant, saw her daughter’s determination firsthand — and from then on, both parents became her biggest supporters
A Sudden Move, A New Struggle
At 21, with barely any long-term planning behind it, Ankita moved to Canada. “It was very,very sudden, honestly,” she admits. It wasn’t a decision built over years of deliberation — family circumstances played a part, and after finishing her graduation back home, she simply decided to give life abroad a chance. She wanted to become independent, explore the world on her own terms, and see what she was capable of outside the comfort of a well-settled life in Pune, where she already had a strong modeling network and roughly six years of experience behind her. Canada had other plans. “I had rent to pay, bills to pay. I had to get a job and also study,” she says of the reality check that followed. The first three to four years in Canada, by her own account, are “extremely difficult in every aspect” for most immigrants, and Ankita was no exception — her early time there went almost entirely into managing a job alongside her studies, with modeling put on the back burner. It was only a couple of years in that she turned her attention back to her passion in earnest, and when she did, she found the industry ran very differently from what she knew back home. Unlike India, where opportunities often flow through personal networks and industry contacts, Canada’s modeling and entertainment scene runs on more formal processes — signing with agencies, building portfolios, and starting essentially from zero. Today, she is represented by Ema Models in Toronto.
Building a Career in Punjabi Music Videos
Her breakthrough in Canada came through a chance conversation with a director friend who remembered her modeling and acting background in India. That conversation turned into her first Canadian music video, a song called “Beef,” shot over two fun-filled days. It was the beginning of what has become a defining chapter of her career. In the two years since she began actively pursuing music videos in Canada, Ankita has featured in around eleven songs. Her recent release “Sufne” has crossed 2.7 million views,“Rana” has crossed roughly 150,000 views on YouTube, and “Sona” ranks among her most recent projects. Four more songs are currently in various stages of release and editing. She’s candid about the contrast in production scale between the two countries — Indian shoots often come with large production houses and dozens of crew members, while Canadian sets tend to be leaner, more independent operations. What Canada lacks in scale, she says, it makes up for in stunning locations and genuinely good working relationships.
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Balancing Passion With a Paycheck
Ankita’s days are a study in relentless multitasking: gym in the morning, a flexible retail job that can stretch anywhere from a few hours to a full nine-to-five, coordinating music video
projects in whatever time remains, and — on the day of this interview — finishing work at 9:30 pm before sitting down for an 11:30 pm conversation. “This is the only way to manage things
here,” she says simply. There’s no other option, she insists, if you want to chase your passion while still paying the bills. When the conversation turned to Bollywood star Salman Khan’s
well-known response, on The Kapil Sharma Show, to being called “too busy these days” — that he’s simply working hard, not trying to please anyone — Ankita agreed wholeheartedly. Staying busy, she says, is simply part of growing. Financial literacy, she agrees, takes years to build — and it’s part of why she once pursued the Chartered Accountancy route herself. “My dad was into finance, and I always looked up to him,” she says. For now, though, her own savings go mostly toward keeping up with Canada’s cost of living rather than active investments.
Roots, Travel, and What Comes Next
Despite settling into Canadian life, Ankita’s connection to Punjab remains strong through her mother’s side of the family — she has visited Amritsar many times since childhood, including trips to the Golden Temple. She’s also become an avid traveller within Canada, prioritising weekend trips with friends to explore new provinces. “That’s what we came here for,” she says, “to explore the country, to know about the people, to explore as many places as we can.” Musically, her tastes have shifted since the move — she listened mostly to Hindi and Bollywood music back in India, but has become a devoted Punjabi music listener in Canada, with Karan Aujla topping her current favourites list. She already has tickets booked for his upcoming Canadian concert. Looking ahead, Ankita plans to stay settled in Canada while visiting India as often as she can — likely by the end of this year or early next. Her approach to new projects remains instinctive: decisions are usually made in her own mind first, informed by more than a decade in the industry, before she even discusses them with friends. As for what’s next creatively, she says she remains open to experimenting beyond music videos, though her heart, for now, stays firmly with the format that started it all. “Unless you do something different, you don’t know what you’re good at,” she says. “I’m always open to experiments.
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Pune Girl Rise to Toronto Fame | Ankita Kaur Gora Exclusive Interview