Harshil Karia calls himself a 3-time entrepreneur, and rightly so. He is a young man with an exceptionally clear vision and is largely known for being the CEO and founder of Schbang, a comprehensive marketing solutions agency.
He was also a co-founder at FoxyMoron, a leading independent full-funnel creative and performance digital agency and a part of the Zoo Media network.
Recently, Harshil co-founded a meditation app Level along with content creator-turned-entrepreneur Ranveer Allahbadia who is famously known for his YouTube channel BeerBiceps and his podcast ‘The Ranveer Show‘.
Beginning of the Journey
Harshil was born and brought up in Mumbai and went to Dhirubhai Ambani International School. A part of him is immensely grateful for his time in the school. “What was so amazing about it was that it was the first time I felt pushing myself to think and it started the process of questioning things,” he says.
His school had an assignment where they were required to read 12 books over the course of their summer break which had a lot of influence on shaping his personality.
After school, he got into Jai Hind College for a BMM in Advertising, Marketing and Media. He continued to carry his learnings with him through the entirety of his career and did an internship in advertising in his first year of college which really got him invested in the field.
In his second year, he worked as an intern for a tech company and in his final year of college, he worked at WATConsultant as a blogger and consultant. These experiences were crucial for him and largely shaped his entrepreneurial journey into what it is now.
From FoxyMoron to Schbang
In 2008, Harshil became the co-founder of his first-ever company, Foxymoron— a creative and performance digital agency. Little by little, the company took off and they even got contracts with Cadbury, Maybelline New York, Garnier, L’Oreal Paris, etc.
Things were working pretty satisfactorily and he was making bank until his heart decided it was time to part ways with the company. Part of the reason why he made this abrupt but life-changing decision was that the co-founders had different visions for the company.
“I was feeling kind of compressed and choked. Alignment on thought processes and alignment on values is what led me to rethink continuing to work,” he said.
Schbang was founded in Jan 2015 along with Sohil Karia and Akshay Gurnani with a bang! The name, Schbang, is derived from the word ‘Shebang’ meaning ‘the whole of something’ and was revised due to fairly obvious reasons.
Their website coherently explains what Schbang does and is. “The Whole Schbang is a testament to our wholeness or completeness of offering. The idea of bringing various integrated marketing service needs under 1 roof is our reason to exist. In a world where agencies are digital or creative or media – we’d like to stand for something a lot simpler. A client partner that delivers a solution” is what it has to say.
Harshil says part of the reason why Schbang was a huge success was that their vision from day one was clear. He says, “There was a very clear vision of what we wanted to achieve as Schbang, what gaps we could fill, the kind of people we wanted to hire and what kind of culture we wanted to set and I was very excited about what we could build further”.
Fast forward to 8 years later, the company has more than 1,000 employees and over 100 clients across the whole globe including Fevicol, Barbie, Baskin Robbins, UNO, etc.
In September 2022, they expanded their presence in the market by launching an office in London, UK. Today, Harshil is the first ever Indian to have ever won the Global Founder of the Year Award in Stockholm, Sweden, for his outstanding work at Schbang and Level.
Life Outside Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship doesn’t consume his entire being and Harshol sure has a life beyond it. He loves to sing and even has a self-titled YouTube channel where he used to upload videos of himself covering Hindi songs.
Back in college, he used to be the lead singer of his college band and has bagged multiple awards for it. About a year ago, he worked on the official anthem of Humans of Bombay called “Kahaaniyaan.”
He is so intensely passionate about singing that he says, “I want to ensure I end my life with at least one really famous song that is on everyone’s lips. I don’t know when it will happen, but I’m working towards it.”
To add to the list of his harmonious achievements, he’s collaborated with Ranveer Allahabadia, aka BeerBiceps on two songs called ‘Udd Jaa Bandheya’ and ‘Utth Jaa Rey’ and has played a substantial role in the composition of the latter.
Speaking of collaborating with BeerBiceps, he co-founded Level in 2021 along with Ranveer Allahabadia and Aayush Anand. Level is a science-backed application devised to make a better and mindful version of yourselves, and it presents to you a whole package of guided meditations, breathwork, daily journals, mind-muscle workouts, sleep stories and a whole lot more to finally help you achieve the mental quietude that you’d been longing for.
Regrets and Wishes
In retrospect, Harshil wishes he’d done some things differently. While he was on the verge of leaving FoxyMoron, he’d been sucked into this threatening hole of smoking hash for 5 years.
He eventually got out of his misery, but he wishes to have not spent 5 long years of his life deteriorating his health. He’d also like to make decisions with his mind rather than his heart.
Harshil also wishes to have started meditation a lot earlier in his journey and the fact that he’s helping heaps of people do the same with his app, Level, is admirable.
