Arts & Entertainment

Arjun Shah, Founder of an Award-Winning Talent Management Agency and Entertainment Promoter Who Aced His Way by Grabbing Each Opportunity

Talent Manager, Music Consultant & Founder, Shark & Inkmumbai

Arjun is the founder of ‘Shark and Ink’ which brings talents and brands together and organizes live entertainment events. He says struggle is the only way to succeed in life.

Arjun Shah is the founder of ‘Shark and Ink’ and lives in Mumbai.

He has done his Bachelors in Management from St. Xavier’s College in Delhi. Arjun has been an average student and says that his interest has always been in business.

Arjun started his journey from his early college days and entered the Entertainment Industry when he was 16 years old. He shares that he organized Delhi’s first foam dance party and became an accidental entrepreneur.

Throughout his college days, he was working in the Events Industry and was organizing different parties and get-togethers. He started working as an Artist Coordinator for Groove Temple Entertainment and programmed talent for Hard Rock Café. It was his first formal entry into the Entertainment industry.

Arjun shares that when Facebook came into business and presented the photo-sharing facility, Arjun along with his partners, decided to cash in on the new tech. They realized that it was a hassle for people to take their cameras everywhere so they started with ‘Spotted Club’. They started sending photographers to Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune parties and clubs and clicking pictures there. They would then send out ‘You have been spotted’ cards to people and send them their photographs. They also started a website and provided an option to share pictures directly to Facebook. They started earning from this model and soon Arjun also bought a stake in a nightclub.

Arjun says that as a child he was very curious. He tried his hands in different fields. He worked with Channel V, a broking firm, and even in telecom Marketing with Airtel. After college, he got a job in ‘Percept Limited’, the organizer of Asia’s biggest dance and music festival, Sunburn. He worked in its core team for five years. After that, Arjun started his own venture, ‘Shark and Ink’, and now has been eight years into it.

Arjun says that all this started as a side hustle for him. He thought that it would be good to do something along with his studies. However, his parents had different views. They wanted him to take up higher studies and choose a more serious career. They regarded it as a hobby and were not in his support. Arjun says that struggles were many in his life. He and his partners had no money to register the company. Arjun didn’t want to ask his parents for it. He says that he trusted people too easily and it often created problems for him. Such struggles have taught Arjun many things in life.

Arjun shares that the entertainment industry is very fickle and ever-changing. He gives the example of EDM which was a genre that dominated the music industry for seven years and then saw a downward fall. Many artists associated with it are now nowhere to be seen. Arjun says that evolving and growing is the only thing that can keep you moving in this field. One needs to be relevant in order to survive in this field.

Talking about the Covid pandemic, he says that it was like an arrow being shot in the eyes. He says that their company works in the field of live entertainment which is all about crowds and people gathering in huge numbers. It all had to shut down. However, Arjun says that it gave him time to introspect and clear his mind. He says that he never got time to sit with himself and evolve as a person. During the lockdown, he practiced Buddhism, read more and more books, and started watching quality content like documentaries and biographies.

Arjun says that the Success Mantra in his life has been the thought that if there is no struggle, there is no progress. He says that wishing for a thing will not help, but putting in effort will.