Two college students, the slum child Raja and the dean’s daughter Roja, chat with each other over the Internet and fall in love. However, Roja is engaged and Raja cannot bear to disrespect her father, to whom he owes his livelihood.

Raja (Kunal) is from a very poor, illiterate family, from Tamil Nadu (in the Hindi version he is from Allahabad). People from his region consider that “education is meant only for the rich”. There, poor boys are made to work from age 5, either at factories or farms, so that they can support their families. But, Raja’s mother forced his father to let Raja study up-to class 2, without any work. But he refuses to fund him, and orders him to start work as accountant for their landlord. Raja’s dad is violent and an alcoholic. He spends the family’s income on alcohol. Raja’s family struggles to work hard everyday. Raja’s mom begs him to move to Mumbai to start a new life. Raja heeds his mom’s pleas and moves to Mumbai to attend Ramachandra Institute of Management Studies, the top-most premier b-school in India. The movie starts off at a train station on New Year Day, 1999. Raja talks with a person (Manivannan in the Tamil version, Anupam Kher in the Hindi version) who was well-wishing him. Due to insistence, Raja goes into a flash back. 3 years ago, he reaches Mumbai, where he plans to get admitted into the prestigious Ramachandra College of management, one of the most premier institutes in the nation.

Sitharam (Arjun) is a well respected auditor who lives with his PA Muthuswami (Anu Mohan) in Chennai. Although being a short-tempered and tensed person, Sitharam is very good at heart who helps the people in need. He soon meets and falls in love with Kalyani (Sonali Bendre). After a couple of meetings she too falls in love with him by seeing his good nature.
But Sitharam faces problems in the form of another loving couple, Akash (Suchindra) and Akhila (Ruchita) due to an argument between Akhila and Akash and Akhila acts as Sitaram’s fiancé so that she can get rid of Akash just before he proposes to Kalyani. Kalyani, being an innocent, believes her words and goes away from Sitharam. Hence, Sitharam becomes the main antagonist of the film to make the lives of Akash and Akhila the living hells.

Preeti Vyas (Aishwarya Rai) is a young woman who bravely comes forward as a witness to a heinous assault carried by Bhavani Choudhry (Mukesh Rishi) and his men on a poor teacher whose land they wanted. The injured man is helped to the hospital by Preeti and a courteous and brave man called Avinash (Anil Kapoor), who holds strong morals and values.
Preeti’s testimony angers the Choudhry family and, as a result, Choudhry’s younger brother, Babloo Choudhry (Puru Raajkumar), rapes her. Subsequently, she becomes disgrace to her own family so she is disowned and ostracised by society, so she leaves her house with nowhere to go.