Early life and background

Padukone was born to Ujjala and Prakash Padukone on January 5, 1986, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her family moved to Bangalore, India, when she was only eleven months old.^[1] Her parents Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmins hail from Padukone village in Kundapura Taluk of Udupi District, Karnataka, India.^[2] Her father, Prakash Padukone, was a badminton player of international repute, and her mother is a travel agent. Padukone also has a younger sister, Anisha, born in 1991.^[3]

Padukone attended Sophia High School in Bangalore. She completed her Pre-university studies at Mount Carmel College in Bangalore, India.^[4] While in high school she played badminton at the state level like her father and was a member of her father's badminton club.^[5] However, she was not keen on pursuing a career as a badminton player and abandoned it to concentrate on her ICSE exams.^[6]