Delhi: In the current era, cricketers are most busy on two fronts. To calculate runs and wickets on the pitch and earnings off the field, the process of making a cricketer an agent and then giving his account to an expert marketing agency started. Not only get better commercial contracts, but also invest the earnings in a better way. After the advent of IPL, this system became a necessity for almost every player. In such a situation, it can be easily guessed how special the news from this front will be for a big cricket star like Virat Kohli. After all his net worth is more than Rs 1000 crore.
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Virat Kohli, who has been looking after his commercial contracts and the help of his private team for the last several months without the help of any agency, has now given his account to a consultancy firm. The most important thing about this news is that one of the owners of this firm is Ravi Shastri, when Virat Kohli was the captain of Team India and Ravi Shastri was the head coach, their ‘mutual trust’ was not hidden from anyone. The same will now be seen on the other front.
No one has any idea how big Virat Kohli’s investment portfolio is and what products it includes, even many social networking start-ups are also included in it. Due to this, his net worth continuously increases every year. The name of this firm is ‘Sporting Beyond’ and now they will work with Virat on ‘all commercial benefits’. Sporting Beyond has accounts of many other Indian and foreign companies and new talents associated with it.
When this news is mentioned, it is impossible not to mention Virat breaking all commercial ties with his long-time manager and business partner Bunty Sajdeh in the last days of last year. Virat was with Bunty’s high-profile sports and entertainment consultancy Cornerstone since the early days of his cricket career. At one time, not only Virat, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant but also top stars were associated with Cornerstone.
Sporting Beyond is an almost 3 year old company and one of its directors who especially looks after the work is Jaiveer Panwar. They say that Sporting Beyond is not just Virat’s agent, they are also advisors and consultants in all his commercial benefits and that is why a team has been set up only to handle Virat’s account. Ravi Shastri is a special advisor for his sports portfolio. Virat Kohli himself announced the change in his management team through social media.
However, the news of Virat’s separation from Cornerstone had started spreading when in May last year, Virat Kohli and his wife, Anushka Sharma formed a company named Nomad Management LLP. Then it seemed that Virat himself was starting his own sports management company. The long commercial relationship between Cornerstone Sports and Entertainment and Virat Kohli was exemplary in the cricket market. The main partner of this firm, Bunty Sajdeh, was considered one of Virat Kohli’s best friends and hence he was often seen in cricket parties.
It is not difficult to guess that something special happened, that is why at this stage of his career, after huge commercial success, Virat Kohli took such a decision. In the last few years, people like Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Ajinkya Rahane, Shubman Gill also broke ties with Cornerstone. In 2020, Virat and Anushka were also helped by Dharma Cornerstone Agency (DCA) to enter the film world with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. Due to this, the accounts of Sara Ali Khan, Janhvi Kapoor, Tiger Shroff and many other Bollywood stars came to him.
By the way, let us tell you that Rohit Sharma was married to his sister Ritika Sajdeh. Before marriage, Ritika used to work as a sports manager in this Cornerstone and especially used to look after Kohli’s account. Not only this, film star Salman Khan’s brother Sohail Khan was married to his sister Seema. When the divorce happened in 2022, she was Seema Khan. In 2020, Bunty Sajdeh was also questioned by the CBI in the case of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death. Sushant’s former managers Shruti Modi and Disha Salian used to work in his Cornerstone.