He is 39 and the co-founder and CEO of Graphic India, focused on creating comic book characters and telling stories. The latest feather in this US-born’s comic cap is working with the legendary Stan Lee to create (with POW! Entertainment) a series of animated shorts called Chakra the Invincible (available on Rovio’s ToonsTV, a streaming video platform).

Here’s Sharad Devarajan — who recently attended The Coalition, in Greater Noida, a platform to support creative enterprise, conceptualised by Only Much Louder (the organisation behind NH7 Weekender) and Do One Thing — in an email chat with t2.

As a young entrepreneur, what was the starting point for Liquid Comics and its Indian arm Graphic India?

Graphic India is the culmination of a lifelong dream to really build characters, heroes and stories that tap into the unique creativity and culture of India and appeal to audiences worldwide in the same way characters like Spider-Man, Harry Potter or Batman do. I believe that in the same way the West has created superheroes or Japan, Korea, China have exported their anime, manga, manhwa and original styles of storytelling to the world, India has the potential to become one of the biggest creative exporters. The next J.K. Rowling, Steven Spielberg or Stan Lee is sitting somewhere in India and our responsibility is to find these young talents, nurture them and give them the training, resources and belief in themselves to take their ideas to the world.

I incubated Graphic India at my other company, Liquid Comics, which I founded with my partners, Gotham Chopra and Suresh Seetharaman. We separated Graphic into a standalone business and I was extremely fortunate to partner with The Chernin Group’s Asian investment arm, CA Media, which shares our vision for the potential and opportunity India offers in the character entertainment space. The team at CA Media, which is led by Paul Aiello who formerly was CEO of Star TV Asia, and Rajesh Kamat, formerly CEO of Colors, bring an unparalleled level of experience in entertainment in Asia.

On an international level as we help to take Indian character entertainment to the world, the team at The Chernin Group is an incredible partner to help us bring our content to North America, with deep media relationships across both digital media and traditional film and television. Peter Chernin (chairman of The Chernin Group), is a personal inspiration, as there are very few executives who so seamlessly understand both the creative and business sides of media.

What were the challenges in taking Indian stories and ideas to the West rather than bringing Batman, The Hulk, Spider-Man to India?

In the same way the West has created superheroes or Japan has created anime. India has the potential to become one of the biggest creative exporters in the years ahead and bring a new creative voice to the global stage. After all, it wasn’t just Japanese kids who made Pokemon a success, it was every kid. In today’s world of content creation, it’s becoming harder to define ourselves in the same regional boundaries as we used to. Compelling content transcends race, religion and culture and speaks to audiences worldwide. We don’t think of Spider-Man, Batman or Harry Potter as Western properties, we see them as global properties. Even games like Angry Birds have quickly amassed global audiences in short amounts of time. In the end our goal is to create great stories and characters that are relatable on a very primal level to audiences worldwide. Hopefully, those stories will begin a natural migration to audiences regardless of where we initially market and introduce them.

I believe that everything we know about media is going through a massive change due to technology and globalisation. Either one of these forces alone would have remade everything we know about media, but the fact that they are feeding off each other and intertwined together makes it truly an exciting and disruptive time. Never since Alexander the Great opened up the spice trade have we seen so much globalisation come so fast.

For example, one of our big recent projects is a reinvention of the Mahabharata called 18 Days, which we launched as comics and books and an animated web series. We are now developing it as a live-action television show for a global audience. Mahabharata is arguably the greatest story ever told and has defined much of eastern philosophy and thought in the same way (The) Odyssey and (The) Iliad defined the West.

In the same way we have seen Greek myths permeate the popular global culture through numerous films like Clash of the Titans, The Immortals and others, there is no doubt the Mahabharata has the power to captivate the entire world if executed in the proper way. Great stories like the Mahabharata don’t belong to any one culture, they belong to the world.

So, how did you get Stan Lee involved on Chakra?

First let me say that working on a superhero with Stan is like creating a painting with Leonardo da Vinci or a poem with Shakespeare –– there is simply no way to put into words how unbelievably awesome an experience it has been. Stan has been responsible for some of the most iconic character brands and modern myths in the world today, and I bet more people can recognise the face of Spider-Man than that of the Mona Lisa! There are very few people alive who have accomplished something on that scale. He’s the ultimate “black belt” master of superhero storytelling and to learn from him has been unforgettable. The story and character of Chakra were brought to life by Stan’s amazing mind and the brilliant artwork by genius Indian artist Jeevan J. Kang, who is our SVP creative and one of the most talented character designers in the world. When Stan first wrote the original story treatment for Chakra, instead of just sending it by email, he actually called and read the entire few pages on the phone — which was like hearing a blockbuster movie play out in your head.

Returning to the topic of entrepreneurship, what according to you is the importance of The Coalition?

What Vijay Nair, Laura Quinn and the rest of the team behind The Coalition have put together is truly spectacular and a resource that I wish I had when starting my career as a creative entrepreneur. The most successful thing we see around the world for entrepreneurship to thrive is the need for a proper ecosystem of support to engage, share ideas, learn best practices and find collaborators. The Coalition is a key spark towards building that type of ecosystem and has all the makings to nurture that spark into a bonfire over the years ahead. One of the biggest things we need to do in India for entrepreneurship is encourage more risk-taking and less fear of failure. The team behind The Coalition are entrepreneurs themselves and the type of people who know first-hand how hard it can be to take that risk and just go for it to pursue your dreams.

Sharad Devarajan

Age: 39

Company: Co-founder and CEO of Graphic India

Based: Across the US and Bangalore

University: BFA from Syracuse University and an MBA from Columbia University

Previously CEO and publisher of Virgin Comics LLC and Virgin Animation Pvt. Ltd, a set of companies he co-founded with Sir Richard Branson, author Deepak Chopra and filmmaker Shekhar Kapur

Producer/executive producer: Film adaptation of Gamekeeper with director Guy Ritchie; Dinner With Deepak with Deepak Chopra; Virulents with director John Moore....

Mathures Paul

Why is the Mahabharata the greatest story ever told? Tell t2@abp.inwithin 50 words