Talent representation
Personal branding
Branding for business
Ishant Sharma · ISH—2020 · exclusive contract · 2022 →
Scroll ↓ the walk begins
From a name to a brand.
Ishant Sharma · the walk, 2022 →
01 · Before us
105 Tests, 311 wickets, a thirteen-year India career. What was missing wasn’t fame. It was the mechanism to monetise that name without diluting it.
A talented bowler taking sponsor calls is not a property. It’s an inbox.
02 · 2022
Exclusive representation, won in 2022 — sole agency-of-record for brand deals, social media and personal communications.
The shift in posture: from what’s the brief to what does the brand sound like, what is it worth, what kind of partner do we want. An ownable property with a managed brand surface.
03 · 2022 → 2023
Publishing volume was nearly flat. The lift came from format choices, collab structure and timing — not from working the channel harder.
04 · April 2022
NPCI’s first-ever IPL campaign — RuPay. Be On-The-Go — with Ishant as the lead face. Five films across TV, OTT, digital and social; the Howzzaaaatt! gag positioning RuPay’s payment speed against his bowling.
Harsha Bhogle and Virender Sehwag amplified on Twitter. DDB Mudra handled the creative. We ran the talent — national scale, the most-watched cricket window of the year, our talent at the centre. Covered by ET BrandEquity.
05 · The thesis in action
Instead of selling sponsorship slots one-off, Spinny ran a multi-week placement programme through Ishant’s handles, anchored on archival cricket reels — the format the metrics team had flagged as the year’s highest-performing.
That single format is most of the +14M jump in reels views. For Spinny: a sustained share-of-voice in cricket-fan circles that no single-window IPL slot could buy.
06 · Mainstreet × CRED
A streetwear spree at Mainstreet Marketplace, sponsored by CRED, turned into a piece of content: Ishant on the floor, picking a haul, talking sneaker stories on camera. A brand placement that didn’t read as one.
Streetwear is a Gen-Z signal a Test bowler doesn’t usually own. We built the room where he could own it credibly — CRED as the sponsor of the visit, not the subject of the post.
07 · Ranveer × Ishant
Cross-talent collaborations between cinema’s biggest livewire and cricket’s quiet veteran — engineered, not coincidental. Joint content windows, cross-posted reels, brand-aligned moments.
The bridge work extended to Sanyam Sharma and Rajesh Yadav — separate creator audiences, the same engineered cross-over. The thesis is the bridge, not the host.
08 · The long deals
RD Accessories — a homegrown D2C brand that needed structure, not stardom. We built the deal architecture: rights, licensing, content windows, reporting cadence. Then we shipped the campaign.
Asian Business School — the partnership that didn’t run on a quarter. Multi-year campus engagements; content for ABS that reads as content for Ishant, not as paid placement.
09 · The daughter announcement
We were the ones to break the news — not because we wanted the engagement, because we’d earned the trust to. The post went out on his timeline, in his voice, with no brand handle in the caption.
The documentary window came the same way: a long-form film on cricket, identity and the modern Indian player. Coverage a competitor can’t sponsor their way into.
10 · In his words
“They didn’t manage my calendar. They built me as a product.”Ishant Sharma
Athletes · creators · founders
01
Agency of record, exclusively. One inbox, one voice, one answer to “what is this brand worth.” We say no on your behalf more often than we say yes.
Deals · comms · the calendar, last
02
The managed brand surface: what the person sounds like, what they post, what they never post. Better posts, not more posts — format, collab structure and timing.
Social · podcasts · long-form
03
Rights, licensing, content windows, reporting cadence. Renting the channel instead of selling the slot. Bridges into other rooms — other talent, other audiences.
Structure · cross-overs · long horizons
04
When we believe, we own the upside. The same operating system, offered on equity terms instead of fees — first on a person, then on a business.
Partner, not vendor
On the roster · Ishant Sharma·Pratima Singh·Moksh Bainsla·Rajnandini · exclusive contracts, creators & voices, spokespeople
Act two · Branding for businesses
Once the system was proven on a person, we ran it on brands: positioning that reads like a point of view, an identity that survives the feed, and a deal structure that makes us a partner in the outcome, not a line in the budget.
The natural extension was equity. Arista Vault — a luggage-tech founder we partnered with on equity terms instead of fees, because we knew the deck was Shark-Tank-bound.
Arista Vault
Brand · D2C · Equity partnershipOpen the case →
Slay Coffee
Brand · Coffee · D2C · 6.9M reach, zero paidOpen the case →
Borges India
Brand · Pantry · FMCGOpen the case →
Happydent
FMCG · Brand campaign · Influencer-drivenOpen the case →
Fast & Up
Lifestyle · Health & wellness · Milestone activationOpen the case →
Sneaker Fest
Pop-culture · Streetwear · Festival activationOpen the case →
Spice Station · Social creatives
Eight stops · twenty seconds · hovertap a name to hold on itSpice Station · Bunta Bar · Burger Now · JD · Noidawery · Miss Doozy · Aarushi Jain · and more
The smallest possible yes
