Karan Bajaj

Some Lesser Known Facts About Karan Bajaj

• Karan Bajaj comes from an army background. His father served in the Indian Army and following his father’s transfers, his entire family had to move from one city to another. He grew up in around 10 different cities in India, including Ladakh, Shimla, Delhi, Ranchi, Jodhpur; however, the most part of his childhood was spent in the hills of Himalayas in Shimla. Living in the hills, he developed a passion for hiking and mountaineering.

• After doing an MBA in Marketing and started his first job as an assistant brand manager at Procter & Gamble Corporation in 2002. His corporate career took him to the USA. He worked at the P&G in several superior positions, managing the marketing area for Ariel laundry detergent in India and Herbal Essences in the USA.

• In 2007, the Ad Age named him in the list of ‘Top 40 under 40 marketers in the U.S.’ He is the only Indian born person to achieve this feat. ^[2]adage.com

• He ventured in the wrote his debut novel, ‘Keep Off The Grass,’ while working at the P&G from 2002 to 2008. Released in 2008, “Keep Off The Grass” sold 70000 copies within a year of its release and became the best-seller novel in India. It was shortlisted for the Indiaplaza Golden Quill Award and was a semifinalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. ^[3]Amazon.in
  

• The book put him into the literary limelight. HarperCollins Publishers India, the publishers of the book, was so impressed by the success of the book, they urged Karan to write another book.

• When he started writing his second book, he realised that his life was too small to have a second story in it. So, he resigned from P&G to explore the things in the outer world which would help him write a story. For the next nine months, he travelled through South America (Peru, Brazil, the Amazon), East Europe, and Central Asia (Mongolia).

• After the sabbatical ended, he went back and joined “The Boston Consulting Group” (BCG) in the area of consumer and strategy. He worked jointly with big corporations, including Starbucks and Walmart.

• While working at the BCG he completed his second book, “Johnny Gone Down,” that published under the banner of HarperCollins in 2010.
  

• After releasing his second book, Karan strongly wanted to raise the standards and get his third novel published by a reputed US publisher. But he had to go back to India to see her ailing mother. He went through a rough phase when he saw his mother die at the age of 54. Talking about that time, he said,
  

  I saw her wither away in the last six weeks and wondered about the meaning of human life. I was always attracted to ancient philosophy, but because I saw death at very close quarters and in a very personal way, I went deep into moksha, enlightenment and nirvana.”

• In 2012, he went on a one-year sabbatical along with his wife and travelled from Scotland to India by road via Turkey, Azerbaijan and China. They spent four months at an ashram learning yoga and meditation. They practised wilful poverty during their entire stay in the ashram where they lived like monks, sustained on two meagre meals, slept on the floor and shared the dormitory with 60 people.

  

• Thereafter, he returned to the US and worked as a marketing director at Kraft Foods for three years and simultaneously penned his third Novel “The Seeker.”

• In 2015, he released “The Seeker” published by the Penguin Random House. This book was about a person who quits his job as an investment banker in New York and begins his journey to find answers for a variety of questions, including the cause of human pain and suffering and ends up becoming a Yogi in the Himalayas.
  
• Bajaj worked as the head of South Asia for the Discovery Networks International from 2016 until he put down his papers in 2018 to pursue his entrepreneurship aspirations. Till then he had already collected over 17 years of experience in brand management and digital strategy.
  

• In 2019, Karan Bajaj released the WhiteHat Jr., an online educational platform where kids between the age of 6 to 14 years could learn computer programming. Under his leadership, the startup witnessed an enormous 100 percent month-over-month growth; however, he sold his prospering startup to Byjus for $300 million. In an interview to the Times Now, Karan Bajaj revealed the reason behind the sale of WhiteHat Jr.. He said,
  

  For any entrepreneur, the first question you ask is, if the product is valuable, how do you get it to millions of users- how can more users use the product- with BYJU’s that vision would come to life in a much faster-accelerated way than going on my own… I barely met BYJUs six weeks ago and found the same sense of boundary-less global vision, we have an uninhibited global view… Great match.. pace, energy, stylistic perspective.” ^[4]Times Now
  

• Alongside his profession, Karan Bajaj also operates a YouTube channel and a blog, whereon he publishes content on a variety of topics. ^[5]karanbajaj.com ^[6]YouTube

• Karan Bajaj is also a Yoga and Meditation teacher.