Akash Khurana is an Indian actor, screenwriter, and entrepreneur. He grew up in Nagpur, Maharashtra, where he first began acting in school plays at the age of five. His interest in theatre and film developed as a child, but he went on to study engineering for his undergraduate degree in Nagpur, following which he got an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur. Khurana then worked at Telco (Tata Motors) for eight years, after which he worked as a management consultant in the hospitality industry, all the while continuing his acting with a few small roles in Hindi films, the first of which was Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug (1981.)

It was the latter part of the 80s, however, that defined the direction of Khurana’s career, as it was then that he co-founded Nimbus Communications Ltd., a media and sports management company where Khurana, despite a brief period away from it, continues to work till this day as the chairman. It was also in 1988 that Khurana worked on his first script, Swayam (1988), a low-budget film that he himself acted in. When the script needed to be reworked, he took on the task of rewriting it with the assistance of Mahesh Bhatt, thus kicking off Khurana’s career as a screenwriter. He went on to work on numerous film scripts including Aashiqui (1990), Baazigar (1993), Daag: The Fire (1999) and Aakrosh (2010). He has also written extensively for television. Khurana has stated that the moment of his taking to writing as one of the happiest in his career.

Soon after founding Nimbus and turning to writing, Khurana also obtained an M.Phil and PhD in New Technology and Human Resources from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, following which, 1995 onwards, he went on to serve as a visiting faculty member. Over the years, he took on a large number of assignments in writing, acting and directing for film and television as well as for his first passion, theatre. Some of his notable films include Sarfarosh (1999), Koi Mil Gaya (2003), Krrish (2006) and Barfi! (2012). These movies were blockbusters and well-loved by audiences. His theatrical involvements have included working with Pandit Satyadev Dubey, Naseeruddin Shah and, Sunil Shanbag.

Khurana frequently works with his son Akarsh’s Mumbai based theatre group, Akvarious. He continues to act, write, direct and teach. He has described his successes in these various fields as lucky accidents, quoting Lewis Carroll, “If you don't know where you're going, any map will do.”