Kollywood. Daughters of three major stars - Soundarya Rajinikanth, Shruti Haasan and Varalakshmi Sarathkumar - have already embarked on a trip to set trends in their familiar turfs of arc lights and flashbulbs. Born with silver spoon as they are, the gen-next clan has enough exposure and suitable platforms that serve as launch pads.

From tattoos to background score (of her dad’s latest movie), the guitar-wielding, tattered-jeans sporting Shruti has had more than a few instances to get herself to the headlines. It wasn’t a surprise when she sang ‘Adiye Kolluthe’, announcing the arrival of punk-rock in Tamil cinema, for she had already trained her vocals in her self-formed pop-band. And the next step, movies, was quite natural too. Before it became public that her supposedly first project with Madhavan got shelved, she was already shaking a leg with the chocolate-faced Imran Khan for Luck, which is due for release in July end. But how far Luck will prove to be helpful in serving a push for her multi-tasking career interests remains to be seen. For now, she is busy scoring background music for her dad’s Unnaipol Oruvan.

Soundarya Rajinikanth is the thinking business woman of today who has her priorities right and interests fixed. Starting out with a career in animation design, Soundarya has worked for movies from Baba, Anbe Aruyire and Majaa to Sivaji. Soon enough, she went on to establish a production company, Ocher Studios that recently collaborated with one of the Hollywood biggies, Warner Bros. Entertainment to produce movies in regional languages. She has, consciously or otherwise, stuck to producing movies thus far and not starring in them. Other than the animation contract for her dad’s Baba and Sivaji, Soundarya and her business appear to be largely self-made. Her upcoming ventures include the animation movie Sultan, The Warrior and the Venkat-Prabhu directed Goa.

Varalakshmi Sarathkumar was to be launched in Poda – Podi, but after a photo session and few announcements, the movie failed to launch. So what if the movie didn’t work out, Varu, as she’s fondly called, has successfully staged the romantic musical Mama Mia recently to rave reviews under her banner Hot Shoe productions. She attributes the success to her dad, Sarathkumar, calling him the reason behind the idea of bringing Mama Mia to Chennai. Be that as it may, her musical, after its success in Chennai is also planned to be staged in Bangalore soon. This could translate into a movie offer, but Varu doesn’t seem to be jumping at anything at the moment, until at least she has successfully staged MM in Bangalore.

These rising stars might shed their famous-dad’s-daughters tags eventually or they might not. They could eventually become successful or just prove to be a flash in the pan using the weight of daddy dearest in the process. But the fact remains that they have paved way for their generation of star-daughters to emerge from the cocoon for a wider perspective.