Shivani Bafna is an Indian-American influencer, entrepreneur, and YouTuber. She worked as a TV Host at the Asian Variety Show and interviewed everyone from movie stars to big filmmakers. She also founded Behind every dream which is a community where people share and celebrate their success stories with her on her podcast. She calls herself the second generation of the Indian American Bafna family and has over 1,74,000 subscribers and has reached 3.33 crore views for her YouTube channel. She is also a TEDx speaker and her talk was aired on 21 January 2021.
Wiki/Biography
Shivani Bafna was born on Friday, 5 January 1996 (age 26 years; as of 2022) in Houston, Texas. She lived there only for six months and shifted to another city with her family.
Shivani Bafna in her childhood
In her childhood, she was obsessed with Bollywood and wanted to become a Bollywood actress or a doctor. She was fond of dancing and learned it. She also worked as a dance teacher at the age of 15. For education, she went to the Solon High School in Solon, Ohio. After this, she went to the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science and the Arts for her Bachelor’s in Arts, Communication, and Media Studies.
Physical Appearance
Height (approx.): 5′ 2″
Hair Colour: Black
Eye Colour: Dark Brown
Shivani Bafna on a shoot
Family
Parents & Siblings
She is the daughter of shiamak and Shalini Bafna. Her father was born and bought up in the United States and is into the residency business. She also has a younger brother named Shreyansh. She is the granddaughter of Kailash Bafna who migrated to the United States with just $7.5 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 & Children
Shivani met Shyam in college and they connected when they were made dance partners at their college Diwali show.
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 began dating. Two years later, when she moved to Mumbai and things didn’t work out between them. So they broke up which didn’t last long. Six months later, they decided to give in to a long-distance relationship and connected once again. A year later, in January 2020, Shyam proposed to Shivani in Paris in a classy Bollywood style.
Shyam proposing Shivani Bafna in Paris
Their marriage was postponed due to covid and they finally got married on 25 December 2021 in Mumbai. This was a big fat Indian wedding that centered on all the Hindu rituals. After the marriage, they moved to the United States and settled there with Shyam’s parents.
Shivani Bafna doing marriage rituals with her husband
Religion/Religious Views
Shivani was born in a Jain family and herself follows Jainism as well. In a Q&A video on her channel, she talked about her views 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.’
Career
She followed Miss Malini Publishing and in February 2014, she found out that they were hiring interns. She put her resume together and sent it to the company email with a few samples that she wrote. She didn’t get any response, so she tweeted to the company and didn’t hear back again. She followed the company page and saw that the founder’s name is Malini Agarwal. She tried every possible combination that came to her mind for miss Malini Agarwal with the domain name missmalini.com. She tried all these combinations and sent an email to all these combinations till her email went through and finally she got a response. After this, she began 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 a lot of responsibilities which included covering press events, trailer launches, interviewing Bollywood celebrities, and writing content for MissMalini’s blog. After being in this internship for several weeks, she covered an event with one of her favourite actor Sharukh Khan and took a selfie with him.
Shivani Bafna met Sharkh khan for the first time while doing her internship at MissMalini Publishing Pvt. Ltd.
During this time she also did several fashion catalog shoots in Mumbai. In July 2015, she began working as a
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.’
Rajkumar Hirani, Nitesh Tiwari, Nikhil Advani, Rajakumari, Badshah, Armaan & Amaal Malik, etc.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbYOLOPt6WU[/embed]
On 19 April 2018, she commenced her YouTube channel and began sharing her 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. She left her job at AVS in March 2020 and went on to begin her own project. In July 2020, she founded BFN Agency which runs end-to-end influencer marketing campaigns and now has a network of over 250+ influencers. In January 2021, she also founded Behind every dream which is a popular podcast available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iTunes.
Favourites
- Food: Spicy sevpuri, achar, and rajma chawal with raw onion
- Dessert: Chocolate strawberry and cupcakes
- City: Mumbai and New York
- Movie: Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham
Facts/Trivia
- She calls herself a person who feels perpetually cold and loves summers.
- She is also trained in Kathak and learned it for six years. The second she learned was piano and practiced it for seven to eight years.
- She was in 6th class when she went to Mumbai, India alone and spent the summer living with her Aunt (maasi) and maternal grandmother.
- She can speak English in both Indian and American accents.
- She calls herself a weirdo, prankster, and loves to sleep for long hours.