Shailendra Singh On Incubating Sunburn, Percept & A Dozen Other Startups

Shailendra Singh is a livewire beaming with ideas. It's his self-belief that has taken him into varied terrain — sports, music, cinema, advertising — and helped him come out on top. On an episode of ‘Sell Side Conversations’, he tells Gautam Shelar all about his journey, incubating 23 startups, starting ad agency Percept, the Sunburn Festival and debuting 206 people into the Indian film industry with his first film,  ‘Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi’, and what still keeps him going. 

Edited excerpts…

How did Percept come to be?

My brother had the idea of opening an advertising agency. At the time, I was still playing professional cricket. I was staying in Scotland, playing cricket for four months, which gave me a lot of exposure. Then I came back and joined my brother. From day one, we were partners in the business. At the time, Percept was called Perceptions.

Our first office was at Nariman Point, Mittal Towers. We had a partner at the time. Then slowly that partner moved out and the company just moved on. We went on to bag clients — Airtel, Hero Honda, Pantaloons, Sahara Star, and more.

How did you bag the Hero Honda account?

I stood outside the Hero Honda parking lot for 16 months to get an appointment with Mr Pawan Munjal, outside their office in Vasant Vihar, Delhi. At the time, they were very tight with HTA, who had done their ‘Fill it, shut it, forget it’ ad. Long story short, I didn't get the advertising but I got an opportunity to do a dealer conference for the launch of their CBZ bike. 

I made good friends with the middle-level management and then I got an opportunity to meet Mr Pawan Munjal who took me on his private jet to Delhi. I told him, “Sir, you’re selling your motorcycle with economy as the spine of it, shift that to emotion.” I explained to him that already, Hero Honda had been bought by about 4 crore customers. We’ll evoke the emotion of those customers. 

I asked him for a budget of Rs 67 lakhs. He said that if he likes the ad, he’ll give me that money; but if he doesn’t — Rs 35 lakhs and the end of our relationship. We shot it, that campaign ran for 14 months, and we never looked back. No agency could get in the doors of Hero Honda after that. 

What has your  journey incubating 23 startups been like?

I have a philosophy in life. See, I like to climb Mount Everest. And it takes a lot to climb Mount Everest. You train, then reach the top, have an emotional moment of holding the  national flag, and then you climb down. But I don't like climbing down. So, I called for a chopper. I like to leave from the top.

Any business that I felt peaked, I handed it over to a professional and left. That's my 23 startups. I was called the “masala cricket man” by Mr. Jagmohan Dalmiya. He stopped me from doing ‘Masala Cricket’, and then Masala Cricket in two weeks became ICL and then the ICL became the IPL.

What has been the most difficult business to get into? 

It was tough to get into Bollywood, or Indian cinema. Nobody wanted to give me a break. And I figured, like myself, there would be many more people waiting for a debut. So my first film, ‘Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi’ was in the ‘Limca Book of Records’ for the largest number of debuts ever in the history of Indian cinema. 206 debuts. We raised money for the film from the massive margins we made in ad films. 

My premise was that if you don’t take us into the industry, we’ll set up our own. I didn’t stop the debut journey. Vishal Bhardwaj’s first film was with me. Sujit Sarkar, Jimmy Shergill, Manisha Lamba… the list goes on. 

Tell us about how you set up the Sunburn Festival.

At Percept, we had a company called Percept D’Mark — an event management company. We did about 1,000-odd live events, way before Sunburn came about. And the one thing on my side was, I knew consumerism. We had the largest youth population on the planet. And the question was: what is the easiest way to unite the youth of the country? 

I call India ‘The United States of India’ because, in this country, every couple of kilometres, there's a new language, culture, religion, belief etc. So I started Sunburn as a social movement where the youth of the country could connect through music. Within music there is no genre that unites us all, but electronic music is interesting — it has no lyrics. 

The idea was: leave your world behind. Come to Planet Sunburn. Live, love and dance forever. The problem was that back in 2008, no foreign artist wanted to come to India. Plus, we were earning in rupees and paying in dollars and pounds. In year five of Sunburn, is when we finally turned profitable. 

Do you have a word of advice for young professionals?

Be a leader, not a follower. Because if you’re not, you’ll be like the rats in the Pied Piper story who were led to jump off the cliff. 

We are all born to dream. And between dreaming and doing, the only thing in the middle is believing in the dream — your self-confidence or atma vishwas. Unless you're free, you can't dream. And unless you dream, you don't truly live.

What keeps you going?

Just the fascinating miracle that is our body. I wake up excited every day. I see opportunities everywhere. 

India is the number one country on the planet. But we don’t market our culture, our heritage. The Indian film industry probably makes 6x more movies than any other country, but none of them have seen fame like the Korean film ‘Parasite’. My dream is to make things in India that are consumed and experienced by the entire world. 

Jab tak saans chalegi, hum khwab dekhte rahenge.

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Published on: Monday, October 27, 2025, 06:00 AM IST