COMPANY PROFILE
Cranky Granny Productions Private Limited is an energetic and innovative creative studio—young in tenure but vast in vision. Founded just over three years ago in Mumbai, it already crafts a world where marketing, animation, entertainment, and sports IPs converge.
While a young company, both its founders bring a wealth of experience across creative, entertainment, sports, and animation domains. Arjun Dhanraj, a multi disciplinary artist—musician, actor, voice over artist, and storyteller—brings his artistic genius to script, sound,visuals, music, and animation production. Alongside him, Mrinalini Sharma, with decades inPR, marketing, and sports entertainment leadership, has powered marketing strategies for MMA, Handball, Chess and Global League Properties.
Together, they spearhead the creation of compelling entertainment and sports intellectualproperties, while simultaneously servicing marketing needs across the entertainment andsports spectrum. From children’s and adult animation to global IPs in music, arts, sports andbrand campaigns, their studio is a dynamic intersection of creativity and strategy. Despite being a young enterprise, Cranky Granny Productions operates with seasoned insight—blending imaginative artistry with strategic business acumen to deliver standout work in entertainment, sports, animation, and marketing.
FOUNDERS
Mrinalini Sharma- Director & CEO
Mrinalini Sharma is a strategic marketing leader and creative entrepreneur with over 12+ years of experience at the intersection of sports, entertainment and IP-led storytelling. She has built a reputation for conceptualizing and scaling large-format properties, securing landmark sponsorships and broadcast deals and delivering high-impact campaigns featuring global icons.
As Co-Founder and CEO of Cranky Granny Productions, she is closely involved in building and shaping original intellectual properties across sports, animation and entertainment, spanning brand strategy, sponsorship acquisition, content production and large-scale execution.
Her career includes defining industry milestones such as co-founding India’s first professional handball league, contributing to the largest broadcast deal in Indian combat sports and enabling the successful execution of a landmark event featuring global icon Mike Tyson in India. She has also been instrumental in the marketing, sponsorship and on-ground ecosystem for the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League across multiple seasons.
With a foundation in PR, brand building and content creation across films, music and global brands, she brings a strong ability to align creativity with commercial scale, helping transform ideas into impactful, revenue-generating platforms with cultural and global relevance.
Arjun Dhanraj- Director & Chairman
Arjun Dhanraj is a content creator, performer and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience at the intersection of music, theatre, film, animation and entertainment. As Co-Founder and Chairman of Cranky Granny Productions Pvt. Ltd., he is closely involved in shaping and building original intellectual properties that blend storytelling, sound and visual innovation into globally relevant content.
From performing on international stages alongside legendary acts to composing for global platforms and building scalable entertainment IPs, Arjun brings together artistic excellence and strategic vision. He is currently developing TheATMVerse, a bold, adult-animation IP that blends satire, music and cultural commentary into a distinctive, globally positioned storytelling universe. His work also spans the creation and execution of large-scale, multi-format entertainment and sports properties, from composing and producing the official anthem for the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League to shaping immersive on-ground experiences, integrated fan engagement ecosystems and developing original audio-led content for international platforms.
With a rich background in music and performance, he has fronted award-winning bands and performed alongside global icons such as Iron Maiden and The Scorpions, while also building a diverse portfolio across acting, voice acting, scripting and live entertainment. This cross-disciplinary foundation allows him to move seamlessly between creation and execution, crafting immersive worlds, distinctive characters and high-impact experiences that are both culturally resonant and commercially scalable, with the ability to travel across formats, platforms and global audiences.
ANIMATION TEAM
Aditya Gupta- Animation Director
Aditya is an Animation Director and has almost two decades of experience in a wide range of TV series and short form projects. He has been working on popular children’s series such as Digby Dragon, Tree Fu Tom and Q-Pootle 5 showcased on CBeebies, Nickelodeon, Universal Kids, etc.Most recently, he managed multiple animation teams across the UK and France in his role as Animation Director for The Adventures of Paddington.
Aditya has also contributed to other projects such as animated backdrops for live concerts and music videos for major international musicians such as AC/DC, Rihanna, The Pineapple Thief and Madder Mortem as well as TV promos and advertisements for clients such as Lego, Playmobil, Shell and DHL among others
Anurag Chandra- Lead Illustrator
Anurag, after having served in the Indian navy for 14 years, in 2013, decided to hang up his whites and don the proverbial smock of an artist. Based in Mumbai, Bollywood beckoned and he started storyboarding for Ads and movies.
Despite having had no formal education in the field, Anurag has been lucky enough to have worked with some of the best names in the industry and is currently one of the most sought-after storyboard artists in India.
He has been part of numerous Ads and Films, not only in India but Middle East and Europe too.
His filmography includes blockbusters such as Tiger Zinda Hai, War, Bharat and many more.
PARTNERS
Vishal Arora
Vishal brings three decades of deep production technology experience across live host broadcast, weekly magazine and chat shows, nightly bulletins, studio game shows and documentaries. Till date he has been responsible for over 7,000 hours of video content partnership with agencies such as IMG, Sportfive and Baseline and platforms like ESPN STAR Sports, Fancode, Sony, Jio-Star, Ten Sports and BBC World. He is recognized as forward thinking innovator who is amongst the first to consider how new tools & technologies such as drones and cloud connectivitycan better tell a story
Gaurav Bahal
Gaurav Bahal also began his career with TWI (now better known as IMG Media, Endeavour Group or TKO) in the mid1990s and has produced a ranger of live content, both on-site and in-studio.He brings a rare combination of industry experience having worked for both an agency and a broadcaster, across both production and program acquisition. The former Head of Production at ZEE Sports & Entertainment, he also worked in program acquisitions at the Asia-Pacific headquarters of ESPN STAR Sports, in Singapore.
Debparna Banerjee
Debparna “Debbie” Banarjee is a communications professional with over 15 years of experience across diverse sectors viz a vis Media & Entertainment, FMCG, BFSI, Healthcare, Hospitality, Tourism and Automobiles etc. Her work profile includes stints with corporate houses like Ten Sports to top-line PR consulting firms such as Genesis Burson-Marsteller &Adfactors PR.
At Ten Sports, she was heading communications and was responsible for the publicity of the corporate brand and its driver properties such as WWE, UEFA, MotoGP and various cricket series. Her stint across agencies entail clients such as SET MAX, BBC, PVR, Maruti Udyog, Thomas Cook, Master Card, Mirae Assets, Aviva Life Insurance, Bayer India, Johnson; Johnson, HUL among many others. Over the last 8 years, her career has expanded to include the media & entertainment industry.