Shivani Bafna

Some Lesser Known Facts About Shivani Bafna

•  Shivani Bafna is an Indian-American YouTuber, influencer, TEDx speaker, and entrepreneur. She became famous after working as a TV host at the AVS TV and interviewing over 200 celebrities on its show named Asian Variety Show. On this show, she interviewed everyone from high-end Bollywood actors to renowned filmmakers in Bollywood. She also runs a popular YouTube channel that has received over 3.33 crore views and has a community of over 1,74,000 subscribers. She is also the founder of Behind every dream and shares success stories of people in her podcasts. ^[3]Behind Every Dream-Spotify

• Shivani was born in the second generation of an Indian American family in Houston, Texas, and lived there for about six months. After this, her family shifted to another city, and she lived there with them. She calls herself lucky as she and her favourite actress Deepika Padukon were born on the same date.

  

• Her father was also born and bought up in the US. ^[4]Shivani Bafna-YouTube Her grandfather is of Indian origin and migrated to America from a small town in India, Gopalpur, and settled there.

  

• She was obsessed with Bollywood since childhood and was a big fan of the Bollywood industry. In childhood, she wanted to become a doctor or an actress. She had a keen interest in dancing from an early age and learned Kathak for over six years. At the age of 15, she worked as a dance teacher for some time. ^[5]Shivani Bafna – YouTube

• In February 2014, she got to know that Miss Malini Publishing was hiring interns. She decided to apply and sent her resume to the company email along with work samples. There was no response, so she tweeted to the company, and still, there was no response. She went back to the company page once again and got to know that Malini Agarwal is the founder of the company. She tried all the possible combinations for Miss Malini Agarwal at missmalini.com and sent an email to all combinations she guessed. Finally, she got a response, and after a few interview calls, she was selected for the internship. She started working there as a blogger in June 2014 at the Mumbai office. When she joined, Miss Malini Publishing had a small team, so she had many responsibilities as an intern.
  

  

  Her responsibilities included interviewing Bollywood celebrities, covering press events, writing content for Miss Malini’s blog, and executing trailer launches. After working at Miss Malini Publishing for a few weeks, she got a chance to cover an event with her all-time favourite actor Shah Rukh Khan and took a selfie with him during the event.

  

  She finally completed her nine month’s internship in February 2015. ^[6]Shivani Bafna-YouTube

• In the summer of 2015, Shivani did modeling for fashion catalog shoots in Mumbai. In June 2015, she started working at Everymedia Technologies Pvt. Ltd. as a Social Media Marketing Intern. This internship was completed in November 2015, after which she went back to New York. In June 2016, she started working at Kepler Group in New York as a Client Solutions Intern and worked there till August 2016. A month later, in September 2016, she began working as Strategy Co-Op at FirstPerson in Indianapolis in Indiana Area and worked at this position till December 2016. In May 2017, she joined Whirlpool Corporation as a Brand Marketing Intern and completed this three-month internship in August 2017.

• She wanted to enter Bollywood, and in June 2018, she finally decided to apply to AVS. At that time, AVS was the only media company in the United States that worked closely with Bollywood and offers insights into the industry. She went to the company website and sent her resume to the company email, but there was no response. So, she browsed the company website once again and noted down the email addresses of all the team members. She began sending emails to all of them but didn’t have much luck with this as well. In a video, she talked about her journey and shared how she got into the company. She said,
  

  I look up AVS TV’s boss on Facebook and I see that he is really good friends with this other guy. I am not going to say the names as it is a matter of privacy. So 19 years old Shivani thinks, Hey if I am not getting into AVS TV, why dont I apply for internship at the friends PR firm. Hopefully do a good job and get a good referal and then may be I like get my way into AVS TV. I contact the friend if he was looking for interns for his PR company and he was for the New York Film Festival, which was just a two week stint in New York.’

• She began working on this two-week project to earn a referral, and it worked out well for her. She finally got the job at AVS TV and began working at its New Jersey office. There she worked on website content creation, spent time learning what’s behind the scenes, and how actually the hosting segment is done, and did her best to implement the skills that she learned after working at Miss Malini Publishing Pvt. Ltd. That year, she also got the opportunity to cover the IIFA Awards and went to cover it for the company. After covering this event, she decided to go back to Mumbai and work closely with the industry. So, she took up an internship at AVS TV Mumbai and started working there.

• At that time, she worked three jobs together. One was at an Ad agency where she worked from 11 to 8 and would make excuses to leave the office for a few hours so that she could take up interviews at the AVS TV office. Meanwhile, she also appeared in movie auditions and would go to appear for them at night. After this learning stint, she flew back to her home country.

  

• In the United States, she focused on putting her hands on gaining some corporate experience. She applied for certain corporate internships this time and was hired by an HR consulting firm, Kepler Group, at Indianapolis. After this, she also did brand management for Whirlpool in Machigan, United States.

• In 2018, she finally decided to pursue her dream of working in Bollywood and shifted to Mumbai, India. There she was hired as a Bollywood TV show host for the AVS-Asia Variety Show. ^[7]Shivani Bafna-YouTube This show brought her to limelight and on it she interviewed over 200 actors, musicians, filmmakers, influncers from Bollywood. In addition to AVS TV, this show was also aired on Sony TV and had a huge audience base both national and international viewers. As the show host, she interviewed celebrities such as Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, Hrithik Roshan, Anushka Sharma, Shahid Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Madhuri Dixit, Saif Ali Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Kartik Aaryan, Arjun Rampal and more. She also interviewed famous musicians and filmmakers such as Rajkumar Hirani, Zoya Akhtar, Badshah, Armaan & Amaal Malik, Nitesh Tiwari, Nikhil Advani, and more. ^[8]AVSTV

• In the same year, she came up with her YouTube channel and commenced it on 19 April 2018. On her own channel, she shares her experience of working in Bollywood, offers insights into her personal life, and shares her journey of becoming an actress, model, influencer, and TV host without any prior background. In March 2020, she left AVS and began working on her own business project. In July 2020, she came up with her own influencer marketing agency named BFN Agency which runs end-to-end influencer marketing campaigns. This venture has a network of over 250+ influencers.

• She founded her second venture, Behind Every Dream, in January 2021. This turned out to be a popular podcast that is offered for listening on major podcasting platforms such as Spotify, Podcasts, and iTunes. ^[9]Pod.link

• She is a follower of Jainism and belongs to a Jain family. She once talked about her religious views in a Q&A video on her channel and said,
  

  I think my parents did a great job presenting religion in a way that it didn’t seem too forced. My dad is an agnostic. As much as he believes in Jainsim, his core philosophy was always to be a good human being every single day. So that value set that I think Jainism provides definitely set at a foundational level.’ ^[10]Shivani Bafna-YouTube

• Shivani married Shyam on 25 December 2021. They met in college and became dance partners during the college Diwali festival, this union kicked off a good friendship.
  

  

  After being friends for four months, they fell into a relationship and began dating. Things became complicated between them when Shivani moved to Mumbai for building her career. They broke up but remained on each other’s minds. After six months, they decided to commit to a long-distance relationship, and this time it worked out for them. In January 2020, Shyam proposed to Shivani in Paris in a highly romantic Bollywood style.

  

• They planned to get married in 2020 but had to postpone it due to the Covid-19 pandemic. On 25 December 2021, they finally got married in Mumbai. This wedding seemed like a big fat Indian wedding that took off following all the Hindu rituals. They went back to the United States after marriage and settled with Shyam’s parents in America.
  

  

• Shivani is a trained Kathak dancer and has dedicatedly learned it for six years. ^[11]Shivani Bafna – YouTube She is also a skilled piano player and learned it for about seven to eight years. ^[12]Shivani Bafna-YouTube

• She was in 6th grade when she traveled from the United States to Mumbai, India, all alone for spending her summer vacation with her aunt and maternal grandmother.

• She is a fluent speaker and can speak English in both American and Indian accents.

• She classifies herself as a weirdo, traveler, and prankster who loves to surprise her people. ^[13]Shivani Bafna-YouTube