IIT Bombay graduate secures UPSC rank 1 after leaving South Korea job
Kanishak Kataria resigned from a ₹1 crore annual package to pursue a career in public administration.
Kanishak Kataria secured All India Rank 1 in the 2018 UPSC Civil Services Examination, according to the Times of India. The IIT Bombay graduate had previously worked as a software engineer at Samsung Electronics in South Korea for approximately one-and-a-half years.
Kataria left his position in South Korea, which carried an annual package of nearly ₹1 crore, to return to India and prepare for the examination. He had also worked as a data scientist at a technology solutions firm in Bengaluru before leaving his job in 2017 to focus on his studies.
During his victory speech, Kataria thanked his parents, sister, and his girlfriend, Sonal Chauhan, for their moral support. He told ANI that he never expected to get the first rank and intended to be a good administrator.
Kataria told The Indian Express that he wanted to find sustainable happiness by helping people rather than just earning money. He noted that his father, Sanwarmal Verma, and uncle, Kailash Chand Verma, were both IAS officers.
His father, Sanwarmal Verma, stated to MensXP that people should focus on his son's hard work rather than the mention of his girlfriend. Kataria joined the Rajasthan cadre as a 2019-batch IAS officer and is currently the Commissioner of the Bharatpur Development Authority, according to NDTV.