Mini Mathur once won Rs 20 lakhs in a quiz and blew it all up in one evening

Mini Mathur is a well-known television host and actress. She is most popularly known for her hosting stint on Indian Idol. Recently, the actress revealed that she had once won Rs 20 lakh in a quiz and blew it all up in one evening. Mini spoke her heart out about her professional and personal life on Cyrus Broacha*s podcast *Cyrus Says*. Talking about how she blew Rs 20 lakh in an evening, Mini revealed, “There was a quiz show where I won Rs 20 lakh. It was called Heartbeat, where the time you got to answer a question was 100 heartbeats. So if your heart is beating fast, you get less time (to answer)… I won Rs 20 lakh and at that time it was a lot of money.”

Cyrus asked, “You gave it away?” and Mini replied, “No, I blew it all up in one evening”, before breaking out into laughter. A surprised Cyrus asked, “In one evening?” Mini said, “No but I did have 22 people and I remember I took them all for dinner to Marriott.”

Mini, a prominent television host and actress, is known for hosting the singing reality show Indian Idol for six seasons. She was also a VJ on MTV and starred in the web series Mind The Malhotras on Amazon Prime Video. On the podcast, she also revealed that the reason she quite the popular singing reality show is because it lost its essence. She said that the show started to construct moments and was far from reality. “I called it quits only when I realized that now, there is no longer a real reality. I did six seasons. After that, it was just a question of making money, but by then, the husband had started making money… But I really didn*t appreciate that reality had become constructed,” she shared.

On the show, she said that her first salary at MTV was Rs 50,000, which was like a stipend for her because she had other sources of income. “In Delhi, I was making so much more money… It was like a stipend which I spent on booking tickets for home,” she revealed.

Mini also revealed that she got her first advertisement after Sushmita Sen failed to turn up on time. “I got a chance to fill in for a model who never turned up for a Ray-Ban campaign. Sushmita Sen was modelling then, and she was supposed to turn up for a woman pilot ad in which we had to pitch for a campaign. She didn*t come on time,” said Mini.

Also Read: Richa Chadha: Kabir and Mini have pledged to hire them