Mohit Bhende

Mohit Bhende is the CEO and Co-founder at Karat. Mohit has a background in strategy consulting and magazine publishing.

Bhende began their career as a strategy consultant for tech companies at Oliver Wyman. Mohit then co-founded Topic Magazine, where they served as publisher and owner. Under their leadership, Topic grew to a team of 40 staff members with a multi-million dollar run rate. The magazine was reviewed by The New Yorker, W Magazine, and the Financial Times.

In 2007, Bhende joined Microsoft as Senior Director for XBOX. In this role, they led global product strategy, acquisitions, strategic partnerships, and new product investments for the XBOX, Kinect, TV, and Music businesses. Mohit also recruited and managed a team of 25 professionals. During their time at Microsoft, Bhende closed $500 million in core platform M&A and business development deals. Mohit also led XBOX in China and spearheaded the acquisitions for Kinect development and XBOX TV strategy.

In 2013, Bhende left Microsoft to start Karat with co-founder Jonathan Lee. Karat is a company that provides customer interview solutions for tech companies.

Mohit Bhende has an MBA from The Wharton School, an MPhil in Game Theory from University of Cambridge, a B.Sc. (Honors Program) in Math and Economics from Penn State University, and they were a Visiting Student (Junior Year Abroad) in Game Theory and Economics at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Some individuals on their team include Lily Thill - VP, People & Talent, Scott Cohen - Head of Finance, and Erez Yarkoni - EVP, Customer Operations & Revenue.