Soaring 90 Feet above the Waves

Originally from Mumbai, India, he came to the United States thinking he’d get into sustainable technology. After studying materials science and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and mechanical engineering at Texas A&M, he got into product management instead—and when he took a stats class at Booth with then professor Robert Gramacy, he fell in love with the challenge.

“It was one of those things that seemed daunting and intimidating,” he said. Gramacy, now at Virgina Tech, and former econometrics and statistics professor Matt Taddy, now at Amazon, encouraged him to pursue a career in data analytics, and Bhasin took advantage of the flexible curriculum to take classes in computer science and public policy as well. After graduation, he landed a job in analytics with Nest, the Palo Alto, California-based smart-home company later acquired by Google.

Kiteboarding consists of a small board strapped to the feet, along with a harness around the chest attached to an enormous inflatable kite flying some 65 to 90 feet overhead that pulls the rider along. The related sport of kitesurfing uses a different board that only travels in one direction, while kiteboards can ride in both.

It was watching fellow Boothie Conor Fernandez, ’15, kiteboarding that excited Bhasin about the sport for the first time. “I love the water. It looked like an extreme sport, and it looked challenging,” he said. After taking a few classes while on vacation, he finally dove in with a weeklong course in 2018 in La Ventana, a kiteboarding mecca north of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. “In the beginning, you are just eating dirt,” he said. “It was like the sixth or seventh day when I finally picked it up.”

Working in San Francisco, he was able to leave early on Fridays to explore more than a dozen local kiteboarding spots; the area has one of the highest concentrations in the United States. “When you are out on the water, there’s just a huge sense of joy on your face. You see turtles in the water, giant fish, sometimes dolphins,” he said. “It’s just a completely rewarding break from city life.” Despite the extreme nature of the sport, Bhasin said, being out on the waves is surprisingly meditative. “It focuses all of your energy on this one thing you are doing.”

Last February he left Google, and by the end of the year, he decided to start his own data analytics company with Gurudev Karanth, a former data analytics director with Minneapolis-based Target. While they are raising funds and organizing the San Carlos, California-based company, called OutoftheBlue.ai, Bhasin has taken to a “vagabond lifestyle,” spending three months in the Dominican Republic, and planning future travel to Spain or South Africa to continue kiteboarding in his spare time. Along the way, he’s met many other kiteboarders, who are often Silicon Valley residents themselves. “People have called it the ‘new golf,’” he said. “People hobnob and meet over kiteboarding.”

As he keeps pushing himself in the sport, Bhasin has been taking higher jumps—recently as high as 20 feet. He’s excited to learn cooler tricks, such as the Jesus Walk, in which a kiteboarder temporarily leaves the board and literally walks across the waves, or something called a Dark Slide. “You throw your legs back and your kite forward, and are just skimming acoss the surface with your board off the water,” he described.

While kiteboarding will be officially part of the Olympic Games for the first time in Paris in 2024, Bhasin isn’t interested in formal competition. He just wants to keep pushing his personal limits. “I’ve managed to find something that gives me a lot of happiness,” he said. “I’ll keep doing this as long as I can.”