Streamflow has a key role in hydraulic and hydrological applications. Hence, the selection of reliable inputs and calibration methods is essential to obtain a satisfactory streamflow forecast from the model. For the current study, the physically based Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model is used for streamflow simulation of the Chaliyar basin in India. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation model was used to perform watershed delineation and to obtain derived products like elevation and slope gradient. The meteorological datasets were obtained from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis (ERA) and India Meteorological Department (IMD) for the period from 1995 to 2015. The discharge data were obtained from the Central Water Commission observation at the Kuniyil gauging station. The modified Green–Ampt method is employed in the implementation of the infiltration model which requires soil properties and vegetation cover derived from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) map and Land Use Land Cover (LULC) obtained from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) respectively. Since VIC requires calibration of many parameters, the auto-calibration was done employing the Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGAII) and Shuffled Complex Evaluation Algorithm (SCE-UA) from 1995 to 2010. The validation was done from 2011 to 2015 for which the model showed similar performances for both the algorithms.