Sharad Devarajan

Sharad Devarajan is the co-founder, Chief Executive Officer and Publisher of the recently formed Virgin Comics LLC and Virgin Animation Pvt. Ltd, a set of companies he co-founded with Sir Richard Branson and the Virgin Group, acclaimed author Deepak Chopra, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and entrepreneurs Gautam Chopra and Suresh Seetharaman.

At Virgin Comics, Mr. Devarajan has built a studio of artists and writers to create a new wave of mythic character properties to be marketed worldwide in comics, games, animation and live-action films. Beyond the Indian comic line at Virgin, Mr. Devarajan is creating new entertainment products with acclaimed filmmakers, actors and musicians including John Woo, Guy Ritchie, Dave Stewart, Duran Duran, Terry Gilliam, Edward Burns and Nicolas Cage.

Mr. Devarajan is also a Producer / Executive Producer on a number of theatrical live-action film projects based on Virgin’s comic properties including, The Sadhu; the Warner Bros. film adaptation of Gamekeeper with director Guy Ritchie and producer Joel Silver; and Virulents with New Regency and Twentieth Century Fox. He is also a Creative Director on the upcoming MMO game being developed by Sony Online Entertainment based on Virgin’s hit comic series, Ramayan 3392 A.D.

In addition, Mr. Devarajan remains the Co-Founder, President & CEO of Gotham Entertainment Group, South Asia's leading comic book publisher. Mr. Devarajan was instrumental in securing and launching the South Asian publishing program for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. introducing the South Asian market to such notable comic magazines including Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Hulk, and X-Men. In 2004, Mr. Devarajan worked with Marvel Comics to reinvent the Spider-Man character as an Indian boy growing up in Mumbai. Unlike traditional translations of western comic magazines, the new series, was heralded as the industry’s first “trans-creation” where instead of a literal translation for a foreign market, the character was "trans-created" into an Indian boy named Pavitr Prabhakar living in Mumbai.