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Sportskeeda CTO Sankalp Sharma exits after 10 years at the helm
MUMBAI: You can’t spell Sportskeeda without code. And for the last decade, Sankalp Sharma has been the man behind the machine, the chief technology officer who took a broken codebase, a skeletal team, and a laundry list of experiments, and turned it into a battle-hardened platform serving millions of sports fans worldwide. Now, after 10 years and 7 months, Sharma is moving on, leaving behind a tech legacy etched into the site’s DNA.
Sharma’s tenure has been one of audacious scale. From six hot codebases and a dozen services, his lean team engineered a system that now handles a billion API calls a day with near-million concurrency. As CTO since December 2020 (after stints as VP of technology and tech lead), he not only scaled from “0 to 1, 1 to 10, and on to 100” but also reshaped how Sportskeeda approached experimentation, reliability, and growth.
Reflecting on his philosophy, Sharma describes his approach as “going wide, going deep, and going around” spotting unnoticed patterns, rolling up his sleeves to refine systems, and navigating future goals through the fog of war. Along the way, he fostered a culture of curiosity, killed fluff projects early, and championed open-source contributions. His earlier career saw roles at Essencemediacom, Mindshare, VML, Foxymoron, TCS, and even a freelance stint helping startups and Fortune 500 companies alike.
From one-click deployments to site reliability engineering, from streamlining legacy microservices to mentoring LGBTQIA+ professionals and startup founders, Sharma’s playbook has been as much about people as it was about platforms. As Sportskeeda now looks ahead to its next growth chapter, it does so with a tech foundation built on Sharma’s decade-long vision of harmony amid chaos.
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Bob Iger joins Thrive Capital as adviser after Disney exit
Former Disney CEO returns to VC firm, stays on as Disney adviser till 2026.
MUMBAI: From castles to capital, Bob Iger isn’t done building just changing the blueprint. Bob Iger has taken on an advisory role at Thrive Capital, marking a return to the New York-based venture firm he briefly joined in 2022. Founded in 2009 by Josh Kushner, Thrive Capital has been positioning itself at the intersection of technology and long-term value creation, an area where Iger’s experience in scaling global entertainment businesses is expected to add weight. Kushner, 40, welcomed Iger back, highlighting his ability to blend technology with human-centric storytelling, particularly in an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
Iger is no stranger to Thrive. He had earlier joined the firm as a venture partner in September 2022, after stepping down as CEO of The Walt Disney Company and concluding his tenure as executive chairman in 2021. That stint, however, was short-lived. In November 2022, Disney’s board brought him back to steady the ship, replacing Bob Chapek following a turbulent period for the company.
Now, with his latest exit from Disney’s top job last month, Iger appears to be revisiting the venture world, this time with a clearer runway. Still, the Disney chapter isn’t entirely closed. Under his agreement with the company, he will remain until the end of 2026 as a senior adviser to new CEO Josh D’Amaro and will continue to serve on the board for his current term.
The move comes as venture firms increasingly seek operators with deep industry experience to navigate what Kushner described as “the most consequential technology shift” of the era, driven by AI. For Iger, whose career has hinged on blending creativity with scale, the transition from Hollywood to high-growth investing seems less like a pivot and more like a plot twist.
