Yuvan Shankar Raja is the last son of popular music composer Ilaiyaraaja. He was born on 31st August 1979 in Chennai; Tamil Nadu.Yuvan completed his schooling at St. Bede's Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School in Chennai and entered film industry at the age of 16.

Yuvan secretly married his long time girl friend Sujaya in 2003 in London. Later with consent of their parents, they publicly married in 2005. But things did not work out between them and they parted ways in 2007 with a mutual consent divorce.  In 2011, he married Shilpa Mohan at Venkateswara Swamy Temple, Tirupati amid his family members and close friends.

Yuvan Shankar Raja always wanted to become a pilot but the music environment around him drove to this field. He first learnt piano after his tenth class from Jacob Master at "Musee Musical" in Chennai. He scored music for trailer of a Tamil film, Aravindham at the age of 16. Very impressed with his work, the makers gave him chance to score back ground score for the entire film. Thus he became a musician at a very young age.

The initial years of Yuvan’s career were really testing. His initial albums drew flack from audience and critics and he had to struggle a lot to get his first break with Tamil film, Poovellam Kettuppar (1999). And from then he gained prominence in Kollywood and entered in to the main league. Many of Yuvan’s films were dubbed in to Telugu but all of them went unnoticed. His music was first appreciated by Telugu audience with Selva Raghavan’s dubbing film, 7/G Brundavan Colony. The album was very successful in Telugu and it gained him good name here. The success was immediately followed by another chartbuster album Manmadha in the same year (2004).

Yuvan Shankar Raja’s first direct Telugu movie is Allu Arjun’s Happy (2005). The movie album was a chartbuster and played a major role in the film’s box office performance. Even after the success, Yuvan did not take the career here seriously and went on with his Kollywood commitments.  As a result, there was a 2 year gap in Tollywood and in 2007 he came back with two finest albums Raju Bhai and Aadu Vaari Maatalaku Ardhale Verule. While Raju Bhai is a failure at box office, AMAV is a big success.

From 2003, Yuvan Shankar Raja rose to the level of a top musician in Tamil. So he always had a patchy stint in Telugu. After the successes in 2007, he only came back to Tollywood for four direct Telugu movies – Oy, Panja, Mr. Nookayya, Denikaina Ready (only 2 songs). All of them are chartbusters . During the same time, Telugu audience got to listen some of his other albums through dubbing films like – Awara, Gambler, Na Peru Siva, Nene Ambani, Vaadu Veedu, David Billa etc. In 2014, Yuvan staged a comeback in to Telugu with Ram Charan’s Govindhudu Andari Vaadele. The audio of the film worked out well as well as the film at the box office.