| Richa Adhia | |
| Education: | Shaaban Robert Secondary School |
| Occupation: | Model, Actor, Entrepreneur |
| Birth Name: | Rachael Maria Adhia |
| Birth Date: | 1 May 1988 |
| Birth Place: | Mwanza, Tanzania |
| Eye Color: | green |
| Miss Tanzania 2007 Miss Earth Tanzania 2006 Miss India Tanzania 2010 | |
| Competitions: | Miss Earth 2006, Miss World 2007, Miss India Worldwide 2010 |
| Spouse: | Haninder Sachdeva |
Rachael "Richa" Maria Adhia (born 1 May 1988) is a Tanzanian model and beauty pageant titleholder won Miss Earth Tanzania 2006, Miss Tanzania 2007 and Miss India Tanzania 2010. She is of Indian descent with family origins from Calangute, Goa[1] [2] who was born and brought up in Tanzania.
She represented Tanzania in both Miss Earth 2006 in the Philippines and Miss World 2007 in China. So far, she remains the only Tanzanian beauty pageant contestant to have represented her country in both of the International contests. In 2010 she was also chosen to represent Tanzania at Miss India Worldwide pageant.
Richa Adhia grew up in Mwanza, Tanzania and went to Lake English Medium Primary School.She later moved to the city of Dar Es Salaam and went to Shaban Robert Secondary School. Coming from a humble background, she first began working at the age of 13 and was scouted as amodel at the age of 15 by a well-renowned fashion designer Mustafa Hassanali. This went on tobecome her breakthrough as a famous Indian model who walked the ramp for various designersnationally and internationally.
At the age of 19, she joined the beauty pageant world and won various pageants beforebecoming an entrepreneur and starting a business in beauty, real estate and eventsmanagement.[3]
She later founded Richa Adhia’s Foundation (RAF) which worked with the elderly to provide shelterand free eye treatments supported by IPP Media.
Adhia won Miss Earth Tanzania 2006 and represented Tanzania in Miss Earth 2006 in the Philippines where she was initially counted among the strongest contestants from Africa, after being placed among the Top 15 best swimsuit contestants. However, she was unable to make a cut into the semifinalists in the Final Show.
After completing her reign as Miss Earth Tanzania in 2006, Richa, went ahead to participate in other regional beauty contests and finally won Miss Kinondoni 2007, after which she was able to participate in Miss Tanzania 2007 contest which she also won. There was a controversy over her win due to her race, as she was of Indian origin.[4] However, despite the mixed reactions, she went ahead to participate in Miss World 2007 contest in China the same year and became the first Asian ethnic contestant to represent an East African country in the Miss World contest.
On 6 March 2010, Richa was chosen to represent Tanzania in the Miss India Worldwide contest for the first time, the contest was held in Durban, South Africa where she was placed among the Top Ten contestants and also won a TOP MODEL award.[5]
In addition to being a model, TV host and an event organizer, Richa has also acted in the following movies/TV shows:
| Year | Title | |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Full Moon[6] | |
| 2012 | Zamora[7] | |
| 2013 | Siri ya Mtungi |
In 2018 she married Haninder Sachdeva, an UK based hotelier and entrepreneur and settled in the United Kingdom where they run a hotel asset management company called Eight Continents Hotels and Resorts