Bollywood Groove
Bollywood Groove is a Chicago-based Dance & Fitness company. Co-founders Ajanta and Vivek founded this company in 2010 due to their passion for spreading the joy of cultural movement in Chicagoland.
Starting from scratch in a completely new city with no initial network, the company grew entirely organically to become the largest of its kind in Chicagoland as well as became a strong presence in the community to bring people together who value diversity.
The company has created proprietary and novel fitness formats such as BollyGroove Cardio for adults and BollyGroove Kids – a unique combination of Indian Dances & Cultural Stories.
Bollywood Groove also brought Indian dances to the masses via performances and workshops at venues such as Millennium Park, Navy Pier, Grant Park, vibrant street festivals of Chicago, and more.
Culture Groove
Culture Groove started in 2016 to bring the joy of culture to the world!
The mission of Culture Groove has been to make multicultural learning accessible to all in the same engaging and enjoyable format that Bollywood Groove provided in Chicago.
Hence was created the bestselling series of Maya & Neel’s India Adventures that currently has 13 titles. The books quickly gained tremendous popularity with the 5-days of Diwali book ranking #387 in all of Amazon’s 8 million books.
Today, the series has books that cover prominent Indian festivals such as Diwali, Holi, Ramadan and Eid, Navratri, Vaisakhi; places such as Mumbai, Delhi, and Taj Mahal; mythological and other stories including Krishna, Ganesha, and Ramayana; and even one on Indian wedding.
Then came the Culture Groove YouTube channels that have animations, songs, dances, crafts, and more to make the content digitally accessible. Together, these channels have gained more than 50 million views and 230,000 subscribers.
About Ajanta Chakraborty
Ajanta Chakraborty is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bollywood Groove and Culture Groove.
Ajanta has an MS in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia (ranked in the top two in Canada) and a Senior Diploma in Indian classical dance, Bharata Natyam.
After working in Silicon Valley as a technologist for 7 years, she has spent more than a decade creating businesses that actively work towards raising multicultural kids as well as increasing awareness about ethnic dance and fitness.
Her work has been featured on NBC, ABC, FOX, Elle Magazine, Neilsen Media, WCIU, WGN, Sun-Times, Univision, Al Jazira, and more.
Ajanta is the recipient of the International prestigious Purple Dragonfly Book Awards, Corporate Woman of Achievement award by NAWBO, YouTube Silver Creator Award, Best Dance/Music company CEO from WE Awards, and more.
Ajanta is also a proud alumnus of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program as well as Entrepreneur Organization (EO).
