Karan Bajaj is a multi-millionaire Indian-American businessman, yogi and renowned author. He is the founder of WhiteHat Jr., an online edtech coding and programming platform for kids, which was later sold to Byjus for $300 million. His first two novels, Keep Off the Grass (2008) and Johnny Gone Down, were best-selling novels in India.
Wiki/Biography
Karan Bajaj was born on Saturday, June 30, 1979 (44 years old in 2023) in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. His zodiac sign is Cancer. He grew up in the Himalayas. His entire family had to move from one place to another due to his father’s frequent transfers. He lived in 10 different cities, including Delhi, Shimla, Tezpur, Ranchi, Jodhpur, and Ladakh. As his family moved from one city to another, his schools also kept changing. He studied in 10 different schools, one of which was the Army Public School in Delhi. He did his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and then went to the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore for an MBA in marketing. In 2005, he went to the United States for work and has been living there since then.
appearance
Height (approximate): 6′ 4″
Hair color: Black
Eye color: Black
Family and caste
Karan Bajaj was born into a military family.
Parents and siblings
Karan’s father served in the Indian Army. His mother died of cancer in 2015. Karan has revealed little about his parents and siblings.
Relationships and Children
Karan Bajaj is married to Kerry Bajaj, a nutritionist, baby sleep coach and author. She is the author of the book Sleep Baby Sleep, published by Harper Collins. They have two daughters, Leela and Rumi.
Karan Bajaj with his wife and first daughter Leela
Profession
His career has been varied, from running a consumer products business to writing novels to starting his own business.
In the corporate sector
After earning his MBA, Bajaj started his corporate career at Procter & Gamble in 2002 as an assistant brand manager. He held various senior positions, managing Ariel laundry detergent in India and Herbal Essences in the US until 2008. He spent more than four years as marketing director at Kraft Foods before working as a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group. In 2016, Discovery Media hired him as CEO of Discovery Networks South Asia, where he worked for nearly three years, stepping down in September 2018.
As a published author
Here are some of his famous works:
Keep Off the Grass (2008)
Keep Off The Grass is Karan Bajaj’s debut novel, written between 2002 and 2008 while he was working at Procter & Gamble. The novel sold 70,000 copies within a year of its release, becoming the best-selling novel in India. It was also a semifinalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Published by HarperCollins India, the novel tells the story of Samrat, a 25-year-old Yale graduate who travels to India to trace his roots. Samrat’s parents are immigrants living in the US. He travels to different parts of India, and during his journey, he is jailed for possession of marijuana, develops a drug addiction, has a one-night stand with a Danish hippie in Dharamsala, meditates at the foot of the majestic Himalayas, and does many other adventurous things.
Johnny Falls (2010)
Bajaj’s Johnny Falls tells the story of Nikhil Arya, a 40-year-old Ivy League student who is penniless, homeless and has a promising future at NASA, but when an innocent vacation turns into an intercontinental trip, things seem to take a dramatic turn. During this journey, Nikhil survives a massacre before becoming a Buddhist monk, a drug lord, a homeless accountant, a software tycoon and a gaming warrior. This is Nikhil’s journey from innocence to redemption.
The Explorers (2015)
The Seekers was published in 2015 and is the third novel written by Karan Bajaj and published by Penguin Random House.
Karan Bajaj at the launch of his new book, The Explorer
The novel tells the story of a man who quits his job as an investment banker in New York City to set out to find the causes of human pain and suffering, and eventually becomes a yogi in the Himalayas.
The same book, just with a different title, “Max’s Yoga of Discontent” was released in the United States in 2016.
He decided on the title of the book before he began writing it.
Entrepreneurship
In 2018, Karan resigned from his position as CEO of Discovery Channel to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. In April 2019, he launched the first version of Whitehat Jr. Whitehat Jr. is a Mumbai-based edtech startup that aims to teach coding and programming to children aged 6 to 14 years. It helps children learn how to build marketable apps, games, and animations online using coding basics. Under his watch, the company performed well and achieved a huge revenue growth of 100% month-on-month; however, in August 2020, he sold the company to BYJU’s for $300 million. Karan will continue to lead WhiteHat Jr and contribute to its expansion into global markets.
In an interview with Times Now, Karan explained why he sold a thriving company to Byjus.
For any entrepreneur, the first question you ask is, if the product is valuable, how do you deliver it to millions of users—how do you get more people using the product—and working with BYJU’s will enable that vision to be realized much faster than I could have done it alone… I just met BYJU’s six weeks ago, and we share the same unbounded global vision, our unfettered global perspective… It’s a perfect fit… the pace, the energy, the stylistic perspective.”
Facts/Trivia
- In 2007, Advertising Age magazine named him one of the “Top 40 Marketers in America.”
- His interests include backpacking and hiking.
- He runs a blog featuring his own content.
- Karan believes that people should not have any hobbies. He once wrote in his blog:
I used to hike, write, and meditate because those were my passions. Then I raised the bar. I published a novel, hiked every incredible mountain from Kilimanjaro to Denali, and became a yoga teacher. My entire relationship to life changed. Before, these passions brought me “a little” joy. Now, they are the deepest, most transcendent source of joy in my life. The depth and lessons from these passions permeate every aspect of life. Happiness lies in the pursuit of excellence. Set higher standards for your “passions.” Push the boundaries of excellence in everything you do, and all of life becomes a constant stream of learning.
- He also runs a YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGyxUIchUzo
- In 2012, he took a year off to travel around the world with his wife.
- New York-based engineer, MBA and novelist Karan Bajaj is also a yoga teacher.
Karan Bajaj meditates in the Himalayas
Karan Bajaj performing Crane Pose (Book)
- In an interview, when asked which role he identified with most as a writer, a yogi, or a marketing executive, he said,
I consider myself a yogi first, and that allows me to function most effectively in my roles as a writer and CMO. Therefore, I wake up each day intending to accomplish all of my activities without regard to narrow self-interest. That’s not to say I’m perfect. I’ve failed more times than I care to count, but at least striving to live according to yoga’s ideal of total selflessness gives us a framework to approach life on a daily basis.”
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education