Anyone who thinks that hip-hop in India is an urban phenomenon should meet Ashutosh Rai aka Warboy. He — along with his producer, Devam Pandey, or DEVM — has just been declared the winner of Red Bull Spotlight, a national-level hip-hop competition held in Mumbai. And the 20-year-old hails from Dharamshala, a small town cradled in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh that's best known for being the Dalai Lama's adopted home. That's where he picked up his rhyming chops, starting in his mid-teens and practising his craft till he was good enough to stave off competition from 10 other Indian cities.

Rai's journey started in the ninth grade, when a friend who's 10 years older than him, and who he considers his mentor, introduced him to rap music. "I heard it and I immediately felt that I can also write stuff like this," he says. But he adds that he initially had a casual approach to hip-hop. That changed when he shifted schools in Class 11, and suddenly found that he had few friends to hang out with. Hip-hop thus started consuming his time in a more serious manner, with the youngster immersing himself into the worlds of artistes like Lil Wayne, Wu Tang Clan and Kendrick Lamar.