In 2011, her first release was Nandini Reddy's romantic comedy Ala Modalaindi, which was Nithya's maiden Telugu venture as well.The film opened to favorable reviews by critics and turned out to become a sleeper hit,[18] while Nithya received critical praise for her performance. Idlebrain's Jeevi in his review cited that she "epitomized Nitya character with her fabulous performance", "looks beautiful in all kinds of dresses" and was "the best debut in recent years of Telugu cinema after Samantha in YMC", while another critic wrote that she was a "charming find" and "...quite the Genelia replacement that our cinema so badly needs right now."Further more, she also sang two songs for the soundtrack album of the film, tuned by Kalyani Malik.Nandini Reddy, later in a review, went on to describe Nithya as "the discovery of the decade". Following Ala Modalaindi, she starred in Santosh Sivan's historical fiction Urumi as part of an ensemble cast. She portrayed a Chirakkal princess named Bala, playing the love interest of Prabhu Deva's character,which gained positive remarks, with a Sify review claiming that she "looks pretty and is a scene stealer".Nithya quoted that much of her character was based on "Santosh's perception of who I am", with Sivan stating that he had written that role for her and that only she could play it.
She is currently working on half-a-dozen projects; Karmayogi, a Malayalam adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet and the Gautham Menon-produced Veppam, her first Tamil film, are in post-production stages, while she is currently shooting for three films, Sibi Malayil's Violin, ad-filmmaker Jayendra's bilingual venture 180, in which she plays a photo journalist, and the Kannada film Jogayya, simultaneously. Reportedly, she has also been roped in Trivikram Srinivas's upcoming Telugu film, which stars Venkatesh
