One introduction. Then he picked up every call.
While he was Vice-President of the student council at Bennett University, Harsh connected with Pratima Singh, the university's sports officer and a former captain of India's junior women's basketball team. She became 98 Entertainment's first proper client, and she made one introduction: to her husband, the India fast bowler Ishant Sharma.
In February 2022 Ishant Sharma, 105 Tests and 311 wickets for India, signed exclusively with 98 Entertainment, making it his sole agency of record for brand deals, social media and personal communications. Harsh was 21. That same month, his admit to the Indian School of Business arrived.
Two months later Ishant was the lead face of RuPay's first IPL campaign, NPCI's “RuPay. Be On-The-Go”: DDB Mudra made the films, and 98 ran the talent. The agency's published case reports his Instagram Reels views up 156% to 23.7M from 2022 to 2023, on almost the same number of posts.
The talk is the inside story of that deal: the talent, the leverage, and the calls that got returned.
The rest was a 21-year-old doing the thing talent managers twice his age couldn't — picking up every call.
From his speaker deck