Draft:Lokesh Sharma

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Lokesh Sharma is is an Indian sports entrepreneur and a former sports journalist who wrote for outlets such as The Telegraph and The Indian Express. He is the managing director of Twenty First Century Media (TCM), a sports marketing and management company that developed from the media business Dev Features in 1993. In his work, he has been involved in sports sponsorship sales and athlete representation, particularly in Indian cricket.

Education

Lokesh Sharma has studied at the Shri Ram College of Commerce at the University of Delhi.

Career

Journalism and publishing

Lokesh Sharma used to work as a sports journalist back in the 1980s. At the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, he was reporting for The Telegraph. Journalist Shekhar Gupta later recounted that Sharma learned that Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson had failed a doping test and passed the information to Agence France-Presse.

In 1987, Sharma co-authored a book with the Indian athlete P. T. Usha, which was published by Penguin Books. The book was titled Golden Girl: The Autobiography of P. T. Usha.

Then, in 2002, Sharma also published columns in The Indian Express, where he discussed player contracts along with the commercial and governance issues surrounding international cricket at the time.

Dev Features and Twenty First Century Media

In the late 1980s, Lokesh Sharma, along with the 1983 World Cup-winning captain Kapil Dev and Dev’s wife, Romi, started Dev Features, a media and communications business. According to Mint’s report, the company published and distributed columns by various writers and commentators. The company also produced sports programmes for Doordarshan, one of the only sources of information and entertainment for Indians back in the day. Sharma later acquired the business in 1993 and renamed it Twenty First Century Media.

As Sharma eventually moved into sports marketing, TCM became involved in sponsorship and athlete management. An Outlook report from 1997 identified Sharma as being with Twenty First Century Media and described him as negotiating a major Pepsi sponsorship agreement with the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Later, The Indian Express reported that Rahul Dravid was Lokesh Sharma’s first major cricket signing in 1996 and that the company, TCM, later on went on to represent several other Indian players.

Athlete representation

From as early as the 1990s, Lokesh Sharma represented several Indian cricketers, along with helping them manage their commercial engagements. A feature from Outlook identified Sharma as the manager of cricketers Rahul Dravid, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad, and quoted him on the commercial valuation of the players. Another report from Outlook in the same year described Sharma’s involvement in Rahul Dravid’s Pepsi endorsement arrangement, while describing him as a former journalist who had moved into sports management. Outlook, once again, in 2002, reported that Sharma managed Rahul Dravid, Mohammed Kaif, Hemang Badani and Ritender Singh Sodhi. Later, in 2005, Business Today featured Twenty First Century Media, founded and headed by Sharma, among its list of leading sports management companies and highlighted the agency’s diverse athlete-management portfolio.

Asian Cricket Council work

Twenty First Century Media has also worked with the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) on sponsorship sales for Asia Cup competitions. It was reported by The Indian Express that TCM held exclusive sponsorship rights for the 2016-2019 cycle. The relationship between the two was later renewed, and in November 2024, the ACC appointed TCM as its exclusive sponsorship-sales agency for Asia Cup tournaments all the way through 2031. This was following a fair and competitive bidding process.

Public reporting and legal disputes

News outlets The Financial Express and The Indian Express, in April 2016, reported, based on a series of documents from the Panama Papers, that Lokesh Sharma was linked to companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, including entities held personally along with a subsidiary of Twenty First Century Media. Sharma outrightly disputed aspects of the reporting and stated that both he and TCM had complied with applicable Indian laws as well as all the regulatory requirements.

In another separate matter, the Indian political party Aam Aadmi Party leaders made allegations concerning Twenty First Century Media’s contract with the Delhi and District Cricket Association. Sharma and TCM brought a defamation action against them. Later, in 2018, the party leaders withdrew the allegations and apologised to Sharma, stating that the allegations were unfounded. Sharma accepted the apology, and both parties moved to settle the litigation in the Delhi High Court.