Shivani Bafna is an Indian-American influencer, entrepreneur and YouTuber. He works as a TV Host on TV’s Asian Variety Show and interviews everyone from movie stars to big movie makers. He also founded Behind every dream which is a community where people share and celebrate their success stories with him on his podcast. He calls himself a second generation Indian American Bafna family and has over 1,74,000 subscribers and has reached 3.33 crore views for his YouTube channel. He is also a TEDx speaker and his talk was broadcast on January 21, 2021.
Wiki/Biography
Shivani Bafna was born on Friday, January 5, 1996 (age 26 years; in 2022) in Houston, Texas. He stayed there for only six months and moved to another city with his family.
Shivani Bafna in her childhood
In his childhood, he was obsessed with Bollywood and wanted to become a Bollywood actor or a doctor. She loves dancing and learning it. She also worked as a dance teacher at the age of 15. For education, he went to Solon High School in Solon, Ohio. After this, he went to the University of Michigan’s College of Letters, Sciences and Arts for a Bachelor’s in Arts, Communication and Media Studies.
Physical appearance
Height (approx): 5′ 2″
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Dark Brown
Shivani Bafna in a shoot
Family
Parents & Siblings
She is the daughter of Shamik and Shalini Bafna. His father was born and bred in the United States and engaged in the residency business. He also has a younger brother named Shreyansh. He is the grandson of Kailash Bafna who immigrated to the United States with only $7.50 from Gopalpur which is a small town in India. He laid the foundation for a fruitful future for Shivani’s father who was also born in America.
Shivani Bafna with her family
Husband & Son
Shivani met Shyam in college and they connected when they were made dance partners at their college’s Diwali fair.
Shivani Bafna and Sham’s first picture together after the Diwali show
This was followed by friendship and after four months of being friends, they finally started dating. Two years later, when he moved to Mumbai and things did not work out between them. So they broke up which didn’t last long. Six months later, they decided to give up the long distance relationship and reconnect. A year later, in January 2020, Shyam proposed to Shivani in Paris in stylish Bollywood style.
Shyam proposed to Shivani Bafna in Paris
Their wedding was postponed due to covid and they finally got married on 25 December 2021 in Mumbai. This is a big fat Indian wedding centered around all the Hindu rituals. After marriage, they moved to the United States and settled there with Shyam’s parents.
Shivani Bafna performs the wedding ritual with her husband
Religion/Religious Views
Shivani comes from a Jain family and herself also follows Jainism. In a Q&A video on his channel, he talks about his views and says,
I think my parents did a great job of communicating religion in a way that didn’t seem too forced. My father is an agnostic. Although he believes in Jainsim, his core philosophy is to always be a good person every day. So the set of values that I think Jainism provides is definitely set at a fundamental level.’
Career
He followed Miss Malini Publishing and in February 2014, he learned that they were hiring interns. He put together his resume and sent it to the company’s email with some samples he had written. He didn’t get any response, so he sent a tweet to the company and never heard back. He followed the company page and saw that the founder’s name was Malini Agarwal. He tried all the possible combinations that crossed his mind for miss Malini Agarwal with the domain name missmalini.com. He tried all these combinations and emailed all these combinations until his email was successful and finally he got a response. After this, she started her career as a blogger in June 2014 at MissMalini Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, and worked here for nine months till February 2015.
Shivani Bafna while working for MissMalini Publishing Pvt. Ltd.
As an intern, she had many responsibilities including covering press events, trailer launches, interviewing Bollywood celebrities, and writing content for the MissMalini blog. After being in this training for a few weeks, she covered an event with one of her favorite actors Shah Rukh Khan and took a selfie with him.
Shivani Bafna met Shah Rukh Khan for the first time while interning at MissMalini Publishing Pvt. Ltd.
During this time she also did several fashion catalog shoots in Mumbai. In July 2015, he started working as a Social Media Marketing Intern at Everymedia Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai and completed this training in November 2015. In June 2016, he started working as a Customer Solutions Trainee at Kepler Group in New York City and completed this training in August 2016. In September 2016, he joined FirstPerson in Indianapolis, Indiana Area as Strategy Co-Op and worked here until December 2016. In May 2017, he started as a Brand Marketing Intern at Whirlpool Corporation and worked here until August 2017. In June 2018, he thought of joining AVS which is the only Media company in the USA who does anything related to Bollywood. He started emailing the company and got no response. He went to their website and noted down all the team members. He emailed them all, tweeted them but still got no response. In one of his videos, he talks about how he got into the company and says,
I looked up the boss of AVS TV on Facebook and I saw that he was really good friends with this other guy. I will not mention the names as it is a matter of privacy. So 19-year-old Shivani thought, Hey if I don’t get into AVS TV, why don’t I apply for an internship at a friend’s PR firm. Hopefully do a good job and get good referrals and then maybe I’ll like get into AVS TV. I contacted the friend if he was looking for an intern for his PR company and he was attending the New York Film Festival, which was only a two-week stint in New York.’
He succeeded in this two-week project and got a good reference that eventually got him a job at AVS TV. Here he started working in the New Jersy office, creating website content and more. Next summer he went for an internship at AVS TV Mumbai and here he started working for his summer internship. At that time he worked three jobs and from 11 to 8 he worked at the Advertising agency and would make excuses to leave the office for AVS TV interviews. She also modeled for auditions and would go do it at night. After this training, he returned to the United States. This time he applied for corporate mediation this time in the United States. He started working at Kepler Group, an HR consulting firm in Indianapolis and also did brand management at Whirlpool in Michigan, USA. In 2018, he finally moved to Mumbai and started working as a Bollywood TV Show Host for AVS-Asia Variety Show which was a turning point in his career. On this show he interviews over 200 actors, filmmakers, influencers, musicians for the biggest South Asian entertainment show for North America. The show has also been syndicated on Sony TV and has a large international viewer base. On this he appeared as a host and interviewed actors including Hrithik Roshan, Shah Rukh Khan, Alia Bhatt, Salman Khan, Shahid Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Anushka Sharma, Kareena Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Varun Dhawan, Prabhas, Ayushmann Khurana, Kartik Aaryan, Sidharth Malhora, Ananya Panday, Kiara Advani, Saif Ali Khan, Arjun Rampal, Sonam Kapoor and many more. On this show he also interviewed filmmakers and musicians including, Zoya Akhtar, Rajkumar Hirani, Nitesh Tiwari, Nikhil Advani, Rajakumari, Badshah, Armaan & Amaal Malik, etc.
On 19 April 2018, he started his YouTube channel and started sharing his experience of working in Bollywood. On this channel, she shares her journey as a Bollywood TV host, influencer, actress and model. Here she also shares every aspect of her life including everything from her travel vlogs to relationship videos. He left his job at AVS in March 2020 and pursued his own project. In July 2020, he founded BFN Agency which runs end-to-end influencer marketing campaigns and now has a network of over 250+ influencers. In January 2021, he also founded Behind every dream which is a popular podcast available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and iTunes.
Favourite
- Food: Spicy sevpuri, achar, and rajma chawal with raw onions
- Dessert: Chocolate strawberries and cupcakes
- Cities: Mumbai and New York
- Movie: Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham
Facts/Trivia
- He calls himself a person who always feels cold and loves summer.
- He was also trained in Kathak and studied it for six years. The second he learned was the piano and practiced for seven to eight years.
- He was in 6th grade when he went to Mumbai, India alone and spent the summer living with his Aunt (maasi) and maternal grandmother.
- He can speak English in Indian and American accents.
- He calls himself weird, a joker, and likes to sleep for hours.
Categories: Biography
Source: SCHOOL TRANG DAI
