Timeline
- 1981Born on 11 December in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh.He was schooled in the city before moving to Mumbai.
- 2004Begins working in television commercials after about a year as a marketing manager at an IT company in Mumbai.
- 2006Makes his television debut in Bhabhi, and appears in Kumkum - Ek Pyara Sa Bandhan.Profile sites name his Bhabhi character as Bhuvan Sareen.
- 2007Plays his first lead, Ruhaan Oberoi in Meri Doli Tere Angana.
- 2009Plays Abeer Bajpayee in Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam and Neil Fernandez in Jeevan Saathi.
- 2010sBecomes a familiar face as Inspector Kavin in CID, and takes roles in Tere Bin and Prem Ya Paheli - Chandrakanta.
- 2016Marries the television actress Akanksha Chamola on 24 November in Kanpur.
- 2021Joins Anupamaa as Anuj Kapadia, the role that wins him the Indian Telly Award for Best Actor in a Lead Role.
- 2025Wins Celebrity MasterChef India, then wins Bigg Boss 19 on 7 December, taking the trophy and 50 lakh rupees.
- 2026Appears on Khatron Ke Khiladi 15 and quits the show, citing his health.
Who Gaurav Khanna is
Gaurav Khanna is one of the small group of Hindi television actors who have worked continuously for two decades without ever becoming a film star. He came through the daily soaps of the mid 2000s, moved into the episodic and fantasy formats that followed, and then found the role that defined him in Anupamaa, the Star Plus serial that became the most watched fiction show in the country during its run.[1][2]
His career has a shape that is common in Indian television and rare in film: he is recognised by character rather than by name. Inspector Kavin in CID, Abeer in Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam, Virendra in Chandrakanta, Anuj in Anupamaa. A viewer who does not follow credits can still place the face in four different shows from four different decades of the medium.[2]
The reality television work is recent and it changed the public reading of him. For most of his career he was a fiction actor, which in India means a performer seen in character and rarely as himself. Celebrity MasterChef India in 2025 and Bigg Boss 19 in the same year put him on screen as a person rather than a part, and both shows ended with him winning.[1][2]
That combination, two reality wins in one year after twenty years of serials, is unusual enough that it has become the main fact of his coverage. He is now introduced as the actor who won both, and the serial career is the supporting evidence rather than the headline.[2][3]
Early life in Kanpur
Khanna was born on 11 December 1981 in Kanpur, the industrial city on the Ganges in central Uttar Pradesh. He comes from a middle class family, and the profile sites name his parents as Vinod Khanna and Shashi Khanna, a detail that no interview in the record confirms and which is repeated across aggregators.[1]
His schooling was at Seth Anandram Jaipuria School in Kanpur, according to the profile sites, followed by a move to Mumbai for an MBA. Wikipedia records the business education only indirectly, through the job it led to: he spent almost a year working as a marketing manager for an IT company before entering the entertainment industry.[1][2]
That year in an office is the part of his biography he talks about most, because it is the part that almost did not end. He has described a professional foundation built on schooling and work experience, and the decision to leave a salaried job for commercials is the pivot of the story. It is also the reason his account of acting is unusually practical: he came to it as a second career rather than as a vocation discovered in childhood.[2][1]
Kanpur stays in the record through his marriage as well. He married the television actress Akanksha Chamola in the city on 24 November 2016, and the wedding was covered as a Kanpur event rather than a Mumbai one.[2]
Commercials and the Bhabhi debut
He began by appearing in television commercials, which in the mid 2000s was the standard entry route for a Mumbai newcomer with a good face and no acting school. A commercial does not require a character, only presence for thirty seconds, and it pays enough to keep a new arrival in the city while the auditions continue.[2]
His first television appearance was in Bhabhi, the Star Plus family drama that ran through the middle of the decade. The profile sites name his character as Bhuvan Sareen. It was a small part in a large show, which is the normal first credit for an actor entering daily fiction, and it put him inside the production system that would employ him for the next twenty years.[1][2]
Kumkum - Ek Pyara Sa Bandhan followed, another long running family serial from the same period. Two shows in the same schedule in the same year is how a television actor becomes familiar: the audience sees the same face in two households within a few months, and recognition arrives before stardom does.[1][2]
The daily soap years
His first lead came in 2007 in Meri Doli Tere Angana, where he played Ruhaan Oberoi. A lead role in a daily serial is a different job from a supporting part: the schedule is five or six days a week, the character is written around the actor's availability, and the performance has to hold across hundreds of episodes without becoming stale.[1][2]
He followed it with Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam in 2009 as Abeer Bajpayee, and with Jeevan Saathi - Humsafar Zindagi Ke as Neil Fernandez. Both are romantic dramas of the kind that the general entertainment channels were making in volume at the time, and both gave him the male lead in an ensemble built around a family.[1][2]
The value of that period is not artistic and he has never claimed otherwise. It is that he learned the discipline of the format: memorising pages a day, hitting marks in a studio that is shooting three scenes at once, and keeping a character consistent while the writers change the story around him. Every later role, including the reality shows, rests on that training.[1]
It also gave him a reputation inside the industry rather than with the audience. Producers cast an actor who turns up and delivers, and the television business runs on that reliability more than on talent. His career is a long demonstration of the principle.[2]
CID and Inspector Kavin
The role that made him a household face across the country was Inspector Kavin in CID, the procedural that ran on Sony for two decades and became one of the most repeated shows in Indian television. CID is an episodic format: a crime is solved within an episode, the cast resets, and the audience can enter at any point. That is the opposite of a daily soap, and it demands a different kind of performance.[2][1]
Playing a police officer in a long running procedural means playing the same note with variations. The character does not grow, the relationships do not develop over months, and the actor's job is to make the investigation interesting rather than the man. Khanna did it for years, and Inspector Kavin became the credit that a generation of viewers still attaches to his face.[1][2]
The show is also the reason his recognition is not limited to the Hindi soap audience. CID has been syndicated and rerun for so long that it reaches viewers who never watched a Star Plus serial, and repeats keep the character current in a way that a finished daily soap does not.[2]
He worked across both formats at once, which is unusual. An actor in a daily serial rarely has the dates for an episodic show, and an actor in an episodic show rarely has the continuity for a serial. Khanna did both in the same period, and that range is what later made him castable in fantasy and comedy as well as drama.[1][2]
Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam, Tere Bin and Chandrakanta
Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam, in which he played Abeer Bajpayee, is the show that Wikipedia names alongside CID and Anupamaa in its opening summary of his career. It is a romantic drama about a relationship that crosses a social divide, and it gave him a lead role with an emotional register that the procedurals did not ask for.[2]
Tere Bin cast him as Dr Akshay Sinha, a doctor in a medical romance. Prem Ya Paheli - Chandrakanta put him in a fantasy costume drama as Prince Virendra Singh, which is a genre that Indian television returns to every few years and that requires an actor to play sincerity inside a world of invented kingdoms.[1][2]
The spread matters. Between 2007 and 2017 he worked in romance, family drama, procedural, medical and fantasy, and each of those formats has a different acting grammar. Very few television actors of his generation have that range on paper, and it is the reason he was a plausible casting choice for a show like Bigg Boss, which needs a person who can hold a room in any format.[1]
None of these shows is as well remembered as CID or Anupamaa, and he does not present them as landmarks. They are the working middle of a television career: shows that ran, paid, and kept the actor in front of an audience between the hits.[2]
Anupamaa and Anuj Kapadia
In 2021 he joined Anupamaa as Anuj Kapadia, the role that turned him from a familiar television face into one of the most recognised actors in the country. The show follows a homemaker who rebuilds her life after a marriage ends, and Anuj is the man who re-enters it. It became the most watched Hindi fiction serial of its period.[2][1]
The part is unusual in Indian television because it is a romantic lead written for a man in his forties. Anuj is successful, patient and secondary to the title character, and the audience response to him was strong enough that the show's writers kept expanding the role. Khanna played him from 2021 to 2024.[2]
The role won him the Indian Telly Award for Best Actor in a Lead Role. That is the industry's own award rather than a popularity poll, and it is the only major acting prize in his record, which makes it the clearest external measure of how the performance was received inside the business.[2][1]
He left the show in 2024, and the exit was covered as a major change to a serial that had been built around a small core cast. For an actor who had spent two decades moving between shows, Anupamaa was the first time his departure was itself the story, which is a different kind of recognition and a more durable one.[1][2]
Celebrity MasterChef India
In 2025 he made his reality television debut on Celebrity MasterChef India, the celebrity edition of the cooking competition, and won it. It was his first non fiction show after twenty years of serials, and the format asked for something that a scripted show never does: being judged on a skill in real time, with no character to hide behind.[1][2]
Two facts from that season travelled further than the win. He was the only vegetarian contestant in the competition, which limited what he could taste and cook in the challenges, and he revealed on the show that he is colour blind. Both details were widely reported and both made the win read as harder than a cooking contest usually does.[2][1]
The colour blindness disclosure is the sort of thing that changes how an audience watches a person. Plating is a visual discipline, and a cook who cannot distinguish certain colours is working with a handicap that the judges can see and the viewer only learns about afterwards. He has discussed it in the years since as a fact about himself rather than as a difficulty.[2]
The win also reset his career in practical terms. A reality show victory in 2025 meant that when Bigg Boss 19 was casting later that year, he arrived with a fresh win and a new audience rather than as a serial actor between shows.[1][3]
Bigg Boss 19: the win
Bigg Boss 19 premiered on 24 August 2025 on Colors TV and JioHotstar with Salman Khan as host, and Khanna was one of the sixteen housemates introduced on the opening night. The season ran for 105 days with a parliament theme, in which the housemates formed a government and debated decisions, and it ended on 7 December 2025.[3]
He entered as a first time contestant at forty three, in a cast that mixed television actors with creators and influencers. That position suited him. The house rewards people who can talk, and a daily soap actor of his experience has spent two decades learning how to hold a scene with a group of people, which is most of what a Bigg Boss day consists of.[1][3]
His season was not a smooth run. He was nominated repeatedly, and in the final weeks he became house captain in a sequence that turned into a controversy: he chose captaincy over ration in the App Room, a decision that cut the house ration to thirty percent and put every housemate up for nomination. The house objected, voted to overturn his captaincy and installed Shehbaz Badesha, and the two men subsequently shared the role.[3]
On day 77 he was saved by audience votes while Neelam Giri and Abhishek Bajaj were evicted. That vote was the clearest signal of his support outside the house, and it came three weeks before the final.[3]
The finale aired on 7 December 2025. Salman Khan held the hands of the top two, Gaurav on his right and Farrhana Bhatt on his left, and declared Khanna the winner. He received the trophy and a cash prize of 50 lakh rupees, with Bhatt as first runner-up, Pranit More as second, Tanya Mittal third and Amaal Mallik fourth.[3]
The win capped a year in which he had already won a cooking competition. Two reality wins in twelve months, after two decades in fiction, is the kind of run that changes a television actor's fee and casting range, and the press coverage of the finale treated it as the arrival of a new phase rather than as a late career trophy.[3][2]
Khatron Ke Khiladi 15 and 2026
In 2026 he joined Khatron Ke Khiladi 15, the stunt and fear based format that Indian television runs every year with a new set of celebrities. It is the third reality show in two years for him, and the one with the least to do with acting: the tasks are physical, the eliminations are decided by performance in a stunt, and the show is shot abroad on location.[2][4]
His run ended early. NDTV reported that he quit the show after winning an elimination stunt, saying that the format was taking a toll on his health. That is a decision that contestants on the show make regularly and rarely announce so plainly, and it closed the 2026 season for him before the final stages.[4]
The sequence of three reality shows in three years is unusual for an actor with a fiction career. It suggests a deliberate move towards the non fiction economy, where the work is seasonal, the fees are large and the audience sees the person rather than the character. Whether that becomes his main work or remains a phase is the open question of his career.[4][2]
He remains a fiction actor by trade, and nothing in the record suggests he has stopped taking scripted work. The reality shows sit on top of the serial career rather than replacing it.[2]
Marriage and personal life
Khanna married the television actress Akanksha Chamola on 24 November 2016 in Kanpur. The two had been working in the same industry for years, and the wedding was covered as a television event in his home city.[2]
In 2026 the marriage became public news in a way neither of them had chosen. On the premiere of the Netflix reality series Lock Upp: Sach Ya Sazaa, Chamola said that she and Khanna had been living separately for a year and would be getting a divorce. That statement is her account, given on a show built around disclosures, and it is the only public confirmation in the record.[2]
Khanna has not discussed the separation in the interviews that this entry could find. The profile sites list the marriage and the absence of publicly named children, and beyond that there is nothing on the record from him. The entry records the position as it stands rather than as it may develop.[2][1]
He is a vegetarian, a fact that became part of his public profile during Celebrity MasterChef India, and he has spoken about fitness and routine as the practical basis of a long television career. Those are the two personal details he has been willing to discuss at length.[2][1]
What has not been confirmed
His education is only partly documented. The profile sites say he studied at Seth Anandram Jaipuria School in Kanpur and then took an MBA in Mumbai, and Wikipedia records the year he spent as a marketing manager at an IT company without naming a college or a degree. No interview that this entry could find sets out where the MBA was taken.[1][2]
His height and weight are not published by him. The profile sites print about 5 feet 9 inches and 70 kg, along with chest, waist and bicep measurements that no interview supports. The numbers repeat across aggregators because they copy each other.[1]
His income is not disclosed. The profile sites estimate a net worth of 15 to 20 crore rupees for 2025 and list serial fees, endorsements and reality show work as the sources. That is an estimate, not a figure from him or from any filing. The 50 lakh rupee prize for Bigg Boss 19 is the only amount connected to him that the record states directly, and it is a prize rather than a fee.[1][3]
The reason for his exit from Anupamaa in 2024 is reported rather than explained. He left the show and the coverage treated it as a major cast change, but no statement from him sets out whether the decision was his, the production's, or a contract ending. This entry does not assign a cause.[2]
His parents' names, Vinod Khanna and Shashi Khanna, appear in the profile sites and nowhere else. They are not included as confirmed facts because no interview or news report corroborates them, and the same caution applies to the claim that he has no children: the record is silent rather than explicit.[1]
Finally, the state of his marriage in 2026 rests on one public statement by his wife on a reality show. There has been no joint statement, no court record in the public domain, and no comment from him, so the separation is reported here as her account.[2]
Questions about this entry
Who is Gaurav Khanna?
Gaurav Khanna is a Kanpur-born actor who has worked in Hindi television since the mid 2000s, first in the daily soaps that defined the Star Plus schedule and later in CID, where he played Inspector Kavin for years.
What is Gaurav Khanna known for?
Gaurav Khanna is a Kanpur-born actor who has worked in Hindi television since the mid 2000s, first in the daily soaps that defined the Star Plus schedule and later in CID, where he played Inspector Kavin for years.
When was Gaurav Khanna born?
Gaurav Khanna was born in 11 December 1981.
How current is this entry?
It was last updated on 7 November 2026, carries 1 revisions and cites 4 sources. The entry has been checked by the editorial team and carries the verified badge.