Nitya Mehra

Mehra was born in Amritsar into a Punjabi Hindu family. Her mother was a fashion designer. She studied at Welham Girls' School, a boarding school in Dehradun.^[4] After completing her schooling she went on to study literature at Delhi University, after which she pursued a film production and direction program at New York University.^[5]

Mehra started her film making journey in 2001 as a Production Assistant in New York, on a Spike Lee production called 3 am.^[6] Eager to return to India, she began assisting film makers in India and learning the ropes. As an assistant director she worked on various Indian and international projects such as Lakshya, The Namesake, Don, Little Zizou, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Life of Pi.^[7]

Mehra directed the Star One teen comedy sitcom Happy Go Lucky in 2005.^[8]

Mehra's directorial breakthrough came in 2013 with the first season of Indian remake of the hit TV show 24, which aired on Colors TV.^[9]

In 2016, Mehra directed her first feature film Baar Baar Dekho starring Sidharth Malhotra and Katrina Kaif, co-produced by Excel Entertainment and Dharma Productions.^[10]

In 2019, Mehra worked on the critically acclaimed drama series Made in Heaven for Amazon Prime Video, where she served as the Director, Showrunner, and Executive Producer for Season 1. The show and its ensemble cast starring Arjun Mathur, Sobhita Dhulipala, Jim Sarbh, and Kalki Koechlin received universal positive reviews,^[11] and features in IMDb's '50 Most Popular Indian Web-Shows of All Time' list.^[12][13]

She wrote and directed the segment Chand Mubarak as part of Unpaused (2020), an Indian Hindi-language anthology film, released on Amazon Prime Video. The story, focusing on the unusual friendship between an auto-rickshaw driver, played by Abhishek Bannerjee and a reclusive older woman, played Ratna Pathak, received favourable reviews and was praised for its poignant writing and direction.^[14][15]

In 2023, Mehra returned as a Director for the second season of Made in Heaven.^[16][17]

She created and directed the coming-of-age drama Big Girls Don't Cry (2024) for Amazon Prime Video. The young-adult show following the lives of students at an all-girls boarding school, dealt with the themes of identity, class, and growing up.^[18] In 2025, she directed one of the segments in the anthology series, Yuva Sapno Ka Safar, starring Aneet Padda and Dalai Mulchandani, digitally released on Waves.^[19] Her next directorial is going to be, Nyaya, a courtroom drama series, starring Fatima Sana Shaikh, Arjun Mathur and Aneet Padda.^[20]

• Winner of the Best Director for Made in Heaven, at the Indian Television Academy Awards 2019^[21]

Nitya Mehra is married to Karan D. Kapadia and they have a son.^[22]