KSHMR is the stage name of Niles Hollowell-Dhar, an American DJ, record producer and songwriter born October 6, 1988, in Berkeley, California. His father is a Kashmiri Pandit who emigrated from India, and his mother is American; he took his stage name directly from Jammu and Kashmir, the region his father’s family comes from, a detail confirmed on Wikipedia’s KSHMR entry. That dual heritage became the organizing idea of his solo career, distinguishing him from most of his big-room EDM peers by folding South Asian instrumentation, language and collaborators into mainstream dance records rather than treating that background as a side interest.

Before KSHMR existed as a name, Hollowell-Dhar built his career inside the production duo The Cataracs, formed with high school friend David “Campa” Singer-Vine. The Cataracs wrote and produced “Like a G6” with Far East Movement and Dev, a song that reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2010, along with the hit “Bass Down Low,” and the duo also produced early material for Selena Gomez, per Wikipedia’s entry on The Cataracs. Singer-Vine left the project in 2012, and Hollowell-Dhar carried The Cataracs name forward alone until 2014, when he retired it in favor of a solo electronic-music identity.

KSHMR launched as a solo act in 2014 with “Megalodon” on Spinnin’ Records, and the project’s turning point came the following year. In 2015, Tiesto revealed live on stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami that KSHMR was the previously unnamed co-producer behind “Secrets,” his collaboration with Tiesto and Vassy, instantly attaching KSHMR’s name to a global dance hit. The Wikipedia biography ties that reveal directly to his debut at number 23 on DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs poll later that year, the highest new entry of 2015. His management roster at Red Light Management credits him with ten Beatport number-one singles in the years that followed, including “Secrets” and “Wildcard,” cementing the shift from ghostwriting pop hits to a headline solo brand.

KSHMR’s DJ Mag Top 100 placements have been consistently high for a decade: 23rd in 2015, 12th in both 2016 and 2017, 12th again in 2020, 11th in 2021, 12th in 2022, 15th in 2023, 14th in 2024 and 23rd in 2025, according to Wikipedia’s tracking of his rankings. He also won DJ Mag’s Best Live Act award in 2017. His most significant recent creative achievement is Karam (2023), a concept hip-hop album built with more than 20 Indian artists including KR$NA, Raftaar and Raja Kumari, listed among his releases on Wikipedia’s KSHMR discography page; Red Light Management’s artist page notes the record charted at number one on Apple Music’s Rap and Hip-Hop chart in India. His recurring Sounds of KSHMR sample-pack series has also become a commercial and reputational asset in its own right, with Volume 4 debuting at number one on Splice per the same Red Light Management biography.

KSHMR’s profile spans the global festival circuit and a specific, sustained connection to India’s dance-music audience. He is a regular headliner at Tomorrowland, Ultra, EDC and Coachella, and he has been one of the most consistent headline names at India’s Sunburn Festival for over a decade; Loudest’s coverage of Sunburn Holi Weekend 2026 confirms he is headlining a five-city India tour across Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar and Hyderabad in March 2026. The Karam album also earned him a cover feature in Rolling Stone India, noted on his official artist biography. Beyond music press, KSHMR extended his recognition into gaming audiences in 2020 when Garena built a licensed in-game DJ character based on him, called “K,” into the mobile battle royale Free Fire, a partnership detailed by Sportskeeda’s profile of the collaboration.

KSHMR does not carry a widely reported, dedicated brand-ambassador contract of the kind some touring DJs hold with audio-equipment or beverage companies; no mainstream music-press coverage documents a standing endorsement deal of that type for him. His clearest branded partnership is instead a licensing and creative collaboration rather than a straightforward sponsorship: providing his likeness, an original track and a playable in-game character to Garena for Free Fire, the mobile battle royale game, as covered by Sportskeeda. That arrangement functions commercially like a sponsorship even though it is framed publicly as a music and gaming crossover rather than a traditional product endorsement.

KSHMR’s primary business venture is Dharma Worldwide, a record label he founded in July 2017 as a sublabel of Spinnin’ Records, since folded into Warner Music Group’s broader operation. Spinnin’ Records’ own launch announcement and Billboard’s coverage of the label both describe Dharma as a home for dance music with global, non-Western influences, and the imprint has since released work from artists across six continents. In 2019 and 2020 he expanded that operation with Dharma Studio, an online production-education platform offering tutorials, sample packs, production templates and paid demo feedback under free and subscription tiers, launched with the explicit goal of giving upcoming producers a better resource than what existed online, according to BroadwayWorld’s report on the Dharma Studio launch. The ongoing Sounds of KSHMR sample-pack series functions as a recurring product line on top of the label and education businesses.

No specific real estate holdings, purchase prices or addresses for Niles Hollowell-Dhar are documented in mainstream property or entertainment press, unlike some of his EDM peers whose home purchases have been individually reported. What is confirmed is that he is based in California, per his Red Light Management artist page. His most substantial verifiable assets are business assets rather than personal property: his founder’s stake in Dharma Worldwide and the Dharma Studio platform, both described in Billboard’s reporting on the label and BroadwayWorld’s coverage of the education platform, along with his catalog of masters and publishing spanning The Cataracs’ pop hits and more than a decade of KSHMR originals and remixes. In the absence of published property records, this estimate treats those business holdings and his catalog as his primary documented assets.