Raj Jhaveri

Raj Jhaveri, (born January 25, 1984 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is a South Asian-American entrepreneur, social media persona, philanthropist, and a former TV Host for Sony Entertainment Television and UrbanAsian.com.

Features and Mentions
Jhaveri's ventures have been featured or mentioned in multiple media outlets such as Entrepreneur Magazine, MTV, Vice Magazine – Motherboard, Wall Street Journal, Motley Fool, MedCity News and MedCrunch.

Early life and education
Jhaveri grew up in the housing co-op projects of Cincinnati, Ohio and as the youngest of two children to immigrant Jain parents from India. Due to their lack of English, his parents were forced to work odd jobs at restaurants and factories in order to provide for the family. During this struggle, Jhaveri and his sister were sent to Bombay, India to live with their relatives until their father was able to find a more secure job and settled properly in a better neighborhood. Jhaveri attended high school at Indian Hill High School and was offered a full scholarship at The Ohio State University's Honors Program. Jhaveri graduated from The Ohio State University in 2006, where he majored in Biology and Mathematics. He later attended Harvard Medical School, but left the program to pursue his first startup. However, Jhaveri was awarded a Master in Medical Sciences from Harvard and co-authored many scientific papers.

Social Media, Sony TV and UrbanAsian.com
In 2009, Jhaveri formed a blog website called TheUrbanNerd.com. Originally, it was created as an open blog website for anyone who wanted to share and post useful information related to technology, travel, philosophy, politics, current events, fashion, music and entertainment, but due to low web traffic, he decided to take it in a different direction. As a result, Jhaveri started his own YouTube channel and began posting videos to the website. Eventually, Jhaveri's channel drew more attention leading him to create an online alter-ego known as "The Urban Nerd." After posting many videos, including a viral parody video that was heavily publicized, Jhaveri was offered to have his own channel on UrbanAsian.com and to become a TV Host for Sony Television Entertainment. Jhaveri covered the 2nd Varli Food Festival for Sony TV, which was a showcase of South Asian chefs from all around the world and brought in celebrity guests such as Padma Lakshmi. The segment aired in over 130 countries on Sony's channel. After attracting a large following, he transitioned out the alter-ego to focus on his health technology ventures and philanthropy projects.

Manethryn Technologies
Jhaveri co-founded Manethryn Technologies, a regenerative medicine technology company, with three of his friends while studying at Harvard in 2007. The venture produced the idea of increasing cellular respiration through modifying the mitochondrial genome in order to receive more electrons through MIT's WiTricity technology. Jhaveri, individually, exited his portion of the company to start The Catalan Group. He still remains on the Board of Advisors for Manethryn.

The Catalan Group
In 2012, Jhaveri founded The Catalan Group, a strategy consulting firm based in Manhattan, New York. Past clients of the firm include startups as well as multiple Fortune 100 and 500 companies. These include Pfizer, Genzyme, Sage Science, BioGenex, Fermentöme, Bio-Reference, Abpro Labs, Ferring Pharmaceuticals (Copenhagen, Denmark), Genentech and the Department of Defense.

Canopy Apps
In August 2013, Jhaveri met Jerrit Tan, the current CEO of Canopy Apps, in order to develop a medical translator mobile application where health care providers can communicate with patients in any language. Tan also asked Jhaveri to run the company's business development ventures. Jhaveri stepped down from his every day role as VP of Business Development in January 2015, but continues to be on the board of advisors related to business development.

Face2Face Health
Jhaveri is currently the founding Chief Technology Officer at Face2Face Health, a child-centered, multidisciplinary virtual healthcare and educational platform that infuses modern-day telemedicine technology and multimedia e-learning.

Philanthropy
Throughout the years, Jhaveri has supported a number of nonprofit organizations around the world, as well as several in the immediate community. He’s been an active advocate for those who are homeless and are truly struggling to survive. Jhaveri was first inspired when he moved to New York City in 2010 and had dinner with an elderly Asian woman pan-handling inside Port Authority’s subway. Since then, he has been randomly taking homeless people out to lunches and dinners and physically giving back to the community every year. Besides being an active member of New York Cares, he has been hosting an annual charity formal since 2008 called The Aquarius Charity Affair, which has raised over $15,000 in funds for charities such as Childhood Leukemia Foundation, Clean Water Projects in Africa, Be Proud Foundation, All India Democratic Women’s Association for Rape Victims, South Asian Marrow Association of Recruiters, Action Against Hunger for Typhoon Haiyan victims in Philippines, American Diabetes Association and Give2Heal Foundation.