Mustafa played tennis for India at the Davis Cup and won bronze at the Asian Games before he ever sat in a boardroom. As founding CEO of JSW Sports he built the Inspire Institute of Sport from scratch, now home to 3,000+ athletes and a handful of Olympic medallists, and ran franchise operations across the IPL, ISL and PKL. The Indian government and international federations have recognised his work in sports development, and Fortune India put him on its 40 Under 40. The proudest moment of his own career is standing on an Asian Games podium in his country’s colours. As a fan, the one that still gets him is Sakshi Malik coming back from 0 to 5 in a nearly empty arena to win India’s first ever Olympic medal in women’s wrestling. Five years after that he was stuck at home on a teary team video call watching Neeraj Chopra (someone whom he backed since he was 16 years old) throw for gold, which he reckons is going to be very hard to top. The two athletes he grew up idolising were Pete Sampras and Michael Jordan. Ask him which athletes make good founders and his answer is basically all of them, because the discipline, the focus, the constant itch to get better, and the ability to take a loss, look at it honestly and go again are exactly the qualities he’s looking for. His one controversial take is that he misses 90s tennis, back when players actually had variety, before everyone started playing the same way and made it a bit boring. The line he keeps is Kipling’s, the one about treating triumph and disaster just the same, which happens to be painted on the wall at Wimbledon.