Karan Bajaj is a millionaire Indian-American businessman, yogi and a famous author. He is the founder of WhiteHat Jr., an ed-tech online coding and programming platform for children, which was sold to Byjus for $300 million. His first two novels; Keep Off the Grass (2008) and Johnny Gone Down were number one bestsellers in India.
Contents
Wiki/Biography
Karan Bajaj was born on Saturday, 30 June 1979 (age 44 years; as in 2023) in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. Their zodiac sign is Cancer. He grew up in the Himalayas. Due to his father’s frequent transfers, his entire family had to move from one place to another. He lived in 10 different cities including Delhi, Shimla, Tezpur, Ranchi, Jodhpur and Ladakh. As his family shifted from one city to another, his schools also changed. He studied in 10 different schools, one of which was Army Public School, Delhi. He did BE in Mechanical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and then went to IIM, Bangalore for MBA in Marketing. He went to America for job in 2005 and has been living there since then.
Physical Appearance
Height (approx): 6′ 4″
Hair Color: Black
Eye colour: black
family and caste
Karan Bajaj was born in an army family.
parents and siblings
Karan’s father worked in the Indian Army. His mother died due to cancer in 2015. Karan has revealed very little about his parents and siblings.
Relationships and children
Karan Bajaj is married to Kerry Bajaj, a nutritionist, children’s sleep coach, and an author. He has written, “Sleep Baby Sleep” which is published by HarperCollins. The couple have two daughters, Leela and Rumi.
Karan Bajaj with his wife and his first daughter Leela
livelihood
He has had a colorful professional career, from running a consumer business to writing fiction books and then venturing into entrepreneurship.
in the corporate sector
After completing his MBA, Bajaj started his corporate career in 2002 as Assistant Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble Corporation. He held various senior positions there, managing Ariel Laundry Detergent in India and Herbal Essences for the firm in the US until 2008. He worked as marketing director at Kraft Foods for more than four years and, after that, worked as a management consultant for Boston Consulting Group. In 2016, Discovery Communications appointed him as the CEO of Discovery Networks, South Asia, where he served for almost three years before stepping down in September 2018.
Here are some of his notable works:
Stay Off the Grass (2008)
Keep in the Grass is the debut novel by Karan Bajaj, which he wrote while working at Procter & Gamble Corporation from 2002 to 2008. The novel sold 70,000 copies within a year of its release and became the best-selling novel in India. It was also a semi-finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Published by HarperCollins Publishers India, the novel revolves around the journey of Samrat, a 25-year-old Yale graduate born to Indian immigrant parents in the United States, who travels to India to discover his roots. Traveling to different parts of India, during the journey, he was jailed for marijuana possession, developed a drug addiction, had a one-night stand with a Danish hippie in Dharamshala, meditated in the foothills of the mighty Himalayas And many other adventurous things to do.
Johnny Gone Down (2010)
Bajaj’s Johnny Gone Down tells the story of Nikhil Arya, a 40-year-old broke and homeless Ivy League scholar who had a bright future at NASA, but things take a dramatic turn when an innocent vacation turns into a disaster. Intercontinental travel. A journey that sees Nikhil survive a massacre, then become a Buddhist monk, a drug lord, a homeless accountant, a software mogul and a game fighter. This is Nikhil’s journey from innocence to liberation.
Seeker (2015)
Published in 2015, “The Seeker” is the third novel written by Karan Bajaj and published by Penguin Random House.
Karan Bajaj at the launch of his book The Seeker
The novel is about a man who leaves his job as an investment banker in New York and sets out on a quest to find the cause of human pain and suffering and later becomes a yogi in the Himalayas.
Same book with different title; The Yoga of Max Discontent was released in the US in 2016.
He decided on the titles of all his books before they started writing.
entrepreneurship
Karan left his job as CEO of Discovery Channel in 2018 and moved on to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations. In April 2019, they launched the first version of WhiteHat Jr. WhiteHat Jr. is a Mumbai-based education technology startup company that aims to teach coding and programming to young children aged 6 to 14 years. It helps children to learn how to market. -Create online apps, games, and animations using the fundamentals of coding. The company performed well under his supervision and achieved a massive 100 percent month-on-month revenue growth; However, in August 2020, he sold the firm to BYJU’s for $300 million. Karan will continue to lead WhiteHat Jr. and contribute to its expansion into global markets.
In an interview to Times Now, Karan explained why he sold a thriving company to Byjus and said,
For any entrepreneur, the first question you ask is if the product is valuable, how will you get it to millions of users – how can more users use the product – with BYJU this approach comes to life very fast. Will come in. Instead of going it alone… I met BYJUs barely six weeks ago and found the same feeling of a border-less global vision, we have an unfettered global vision… Great combination… pace, energy, stylistic perspective.’
Facts/General Knowledge
- In 2007, Advertising Age named him among the ‘Top 40 Marketers in the US’ list by Ad Age.
- His interests include backpacking and hiking.
- He runs a blog which has its own features.
- Karan believes that one should not have any hobby, he has written in one of his blogs,
I used to hike a little, write a little, meditate a little because these were hobbies. Then I raised my level. I published a novel, climbed every difficult mountain from Kilimanjaro to Denali, and became a yoga teacher. My entire relationship with life changed. At first, these hobbies brought me “a little” pleasure. Now, they have become the source of the deepest, most transcendent joy in my life. The depth and lessons of these passions overflowed into every aspect of life. Happiness lies in the pursuit of excellence. Set a high standard for your “hobbies.” Push the boundaries of excellence in whatever you do, and all of life will become a stream of continuous learning.
- He also runs a YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGyxUIchUzo
- In 2012, he took a year off from work to travel around the world with his wife.
- Karan Bajaj, a New York-based engineer-MBA and novelist, is also a yoga teacher.
Karan Bajaj meditating in the Himalayas
Karan Bajaj doing crane pose (Books)
- In an interview, when he was asked that being a writer, a diligent yogi and a marketing officer, which role does he identify with the most? He said,
I identify first and foremost as a yogi, which allows me to play the roles of writer and CMO most effectively. So I wake up every day with the intention of doing all my activities without thinking about narrow self-interest. It is not that I am perfect. I fail more often than I’d like, but at least attempting to live by the yogic ideal of complete selflessness allows for a daily framework for life.
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn