Karan Bajaj

Karan Bajaj Biography

Karan Bajaj is an Indian American author known for two contemporary Indian novels, Keep Off the Grass (2008) and Johnny Gone Down (2010). Both these novels have been bestsellers in India and together sold more than 2 lakh copies in India till now. 'Keep Off The Grass' is now set to become a Hollywood film. Karan is an IIM graduate. He was selected as one of the top ten young business leaders of India by the Aditya Birla Foundation.

He was born in 1979 in a family of army officers and his schooling was completed at different places like Delhi, Shimla, Ranchi, Jabalpur, Lucknow and Assam. Bajaj did his engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi in 2000. Later he graduated from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, in 2002 and then worked Brand Manager for Procter & Gamble and a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group in India. He worked in US as a part of his management consultant job.

His interests in backpacking, and hiking are his writing inspiration. Also his college days at Ranchi have also contributed a lot in providing him formative years for writing. He published his first book - Keep Off The Grass, in the year 2008 which was a bestseller. He was working as a brand manager for Kraft Food, New York when his debut novel was published. The story about a psychedelic road trip of a 25-year-old Yale graduate throughout India was a semifinalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel award for the year. Bajaj's second novel, Johnny Gone Down, is a thriller published in 2010. He feels that his steady corporate career makes him a better writer.  

Published: N/A

Updated: January 21, 2014