Chetan Bhagat is an Indian author, columnist and YouTuber. He was included in Time magazine's list of World's 100 Most Influential People in 2010. Five of his novels have been adapted into films.

Early life and education

Bhagat grew up in a traditional Punjabi Hindu family. His father served as a lieutenant colonel in the Indian Army and his mother worked as a scientist in Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He was schooled at the Army Public School, Dhaula Kuan. He claims to have been an average student at 15. His love for writing began during his school years. He used to write articles for the literary magazine of his school and seeing his name printed on the magazine as a writer gave him intense pleasure. This encouraged him to write more in the coming years.

Bhagat graduated with a B.Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1995 as a 9+ pointer.

Bhagat then went on to pursue an Masters of Business Administration degree in marketing from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and graduated in 1997. In June 2018, IIMA awarded him the "Young Alumni Achiever's Awards 2018" in the Art & Entertainment category.

Personal life

Chetan married Anusha Suryanarayan in 1998. He met her during their college days at IIM. One of his novels, "2 States" was inspired by his real-life love story. They have two twin sons named Shyam Bhagat and Ishaan Bhagat.

Career

Banking

After graduating with a masters of business administration degree in 1998, Chetan was placed through his campus at Peregrine Investments Holdings in Canada. However, he lost this job within six months as the company closed its operations in 1998. His next job was as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs at their Hong Kong office. Despite being unhappy with his boss, he stayed on and kept this boss in mind when he characterised the villain in his second novel One Night @ the Call Center. He spent most of his time at the Goldman Sachs office in writing, completing and revising drafts of his first novel, Five Point Someone. After two years, Rupa Publications accepted his manuscript and offered to publish it.

By 2006, he was vice-president, Strategic Investment Group, Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong. His second novel, One Night @ the Call Center, was published in 2005 and became a best-seller. In March 2008, Bhagat moved back to India with his wife and three-year-old twin sons. He joined as a director in Deutsche Bank's distressed-assets team in Kodak House, Mumbai. The same year his third novel, The 3 Mistakes of My Life, was published and sold seven lakh (700,000) copies in three months.

In 2009, he quit his banking career to write full-time.

Bhagat is also a popular motivational speaker and has spoken at more than 800 organizations in 1000 cities around the world.

Author

Chetan Bhagat started writing his very first novel "Five Point Someone" when he was working at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong in the early 2000s. In an interview, he said he wrote about 15 drafts of the novel and also sent the final manuscripts to several publishers. The manuscript was finally accepted by a publishing house named Rupa Publications in Delhi and was published in the year 2004. This very first venture took him to peaks of fame and popularity. This novel narrated the story of three IIT students who consider themselves to be below average students among other students at IIT. The story was adopted by film director Rajkumar Hirani into a film named "3 Idiots" starring famous Indian stars Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Sharman Joshi and Kareena Kapoor. The movie turned out to be one of the most successful Bollywood movies of all time.

After the huge success of his first novel, he started working on his second book "One Night At The Call Centre" which was published in the year 2005. The novel went on to become yet another major success. In the first 3 days of its release, almost 50,000 copies were sold. This novel became India's fastest selling book of its time. The book was also adapted into a movie named "Hello" and Chetan along with Atul Agnihotri wrote the script for the movie.

Chetan then decided to make writing a full-time career. His third novel "The 3 Mistakes of my life" published in 2008 also became a huge success. This novel became a bestseller and Chetan also became the most successful English-Language writer in India. The Bollywood hit movie "Kai Po Che" is based on this novel.

Chetan's fourth novel "2 States", published in the year 2009 was inspired by his real-life love story. The story is about how he fell in love with a South Indian girl and the troubles he faced in his love life. The book was adapted into a movie with the same name starring Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt and became a massive success.

Chetan's later novels named "Revolution 2020", "Half Girlfriend" and "One Indian Girl" gained a lot of appreciation and commercial success.

His novels, "The Girl in Room 105", published in 2018, "One Arranged Murder", published in 2020 and his latest novel "400 days", published in 2021 turned out to be bestsellers.

Screen presence

Chetan was a celebrity judge along with Marzi Pestonji and Preity Zinta on the dance reality show named "Nach Baliye" season 7 that aired on the Indian television channel Star Plus.

Chetan was also seen in Netflix's series Decoupled, which stars R. Madhavan in the lead role. In the show, Madhavan plays the second bestselling author in India, while Chetan plays himself as India's bestselling author and Madhavan's rival.

Youtube

Chetan is a YouTuber along with being an author and motivational speaker. His YouTube channel is all about providing motivation tips to the young Indians. He has many subscribers and the same has been increasing with every passing day.

He has recently launched his podcast show Deeptalk with Chetan Bhagat where he invites a list of accomplished guests for a heart-to-heart conversation about how they made it big in life. The podcast show has gained a lot of appreciation from his target audience. Chetan believes that it is their journey that would inspire and motivate today's youth.

Some of the guests that have been a part of the podcast show were Ritesh Agarwal (founder and Group CEO of OYO), Nikhil Kamath (co-founder and CFO at Zerodha), Vineeta Singh (CEO, and co-founder of SUGAR Cosmetics), etc.

Awards and accolades

Chetan Bhagat was recognized by IIM Ahmedabad as "The best outgoing student" in 1997.
Chetan won the Society Young Achiever's Award in 2000.
He won the Publisher's Recognition Award in 2005.
Featured on Time magazine's list of World's 100 Most Influential People of 2010 in the Artists category.
Listed '47' among the "100 Most Creative People 2011" by the Fast Company American business magazine and business media brand.
Won the "CNN-IBN Indian of the Year 2014" award in the Entertainment category.
Ranked No. 82 on the 2017 Forbes India Celebrity 100 list.
Won the IBN Live Movie Awards in 2014 for Best Screenplay for Kai Po Che.
Won the Zee Cine Awards in 2014 for Best Story for Kai Po Che.
Honoured with Golden Book Awards 2022 for the Book - 400 Days.