Ajit Jain, born in India’s coastal state of Orissa on the 23rd of July 1951, is an Indian origin employee of Berkshire Hathaway, who currently heads several reinsurance businesses. A 1972 alumni of IIT Kharagpur, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in engineering.
Ajit Jain bagan his career working for IBM in India from 1973 to 1976, and then moved on to the United States, where he earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1978. He joined McKinsey & Co., but returned to India in the early 1980s. After a monthlong courtship, he married Tinku Jain, a girl chosen by his parents. Then he went back to the United States to work for McKinsey. According to Robert P. Miles’ book ‘The Warren Buffett CEO: Secrets from the Berkshire Hathaway Managers,’ Jain said he would not have returned to America, but his wife wanted to move there. In 1985 he left McKinsey to work on insurance operations for Buffett. At that time, he said he knew little about the insurance business. Today, Jain is the President of Berkshire Hathway Insurance group. He is leading Berkshire’s Indian insurance market venture.