Join Date
January 2021
Country
Gender
Male
Age
Not Specified
About Callum L Grady
Born in Southport, he studied business at King George V College, graduating with a BTEC in 2019. In 2018, he co-founded Clickbait, a YouTube news magazine. After graduation, he worked as a salesman in the lingerie and used furniture sectors, and talent manager for R&B musician Vyce. He founded Logical Entertainment in 2019. He co-founded Hydra Incorporated with Morgan Walton and Mebin Biju in 2019, serving as Chief Executive Officer until its subsidiary breakup in 2020.
After Hydra, he founded CF, a casual business and talk blog that hosted a number of interviews with entertainment professionals. In 2020, he launched Labyrinth Global, a talent management-turned consultancy firm, serving as its Managing Director since its inception. In 2021, he launched Vanta Records with Vyce (the R&B musician he managed) and his protégé Vrishin Gattu. Meanwhile, Grady became The Asper Company's second highest ranking member of staff when he acquired a 40% stake under an undisclosed deal in April 2021. At Asper's peak, the approximate face value of his equity was $84m, but much of this became worthless when the company suddenly collapsed in early 2022. He co-founded GradyWalton in 2021; co-founded Semantic Holdings, serving as Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, in 2022; and served as a Corporate Specialist at Jarvis Discovery from May 2022.
Through his nonprofit work, Grady governs the mentorship programme Briefcase, and used to govern The Callum L Grady Enterprise Project (CLGEP or EP). In 2020, Grady confirmed that he had joined nonprofit fundraising group Team Scouse, and in 2021, he joined mascot union BAMH, alongside his Retail Rental co-founder.
Companies & Work
Kohinoor
In November 2020, Grady joined Kohinoor as the company's Chairman, hired in part because of his negotiation and industrial psychology abilities. He oversaw the company's expansion into the acquisitions industry via Kohinoor subsidiary Kohinoor Acquisitions. Kohinoor Acquisitions proved unsuccessful in its many buyout bids, later transitioning into the partnerships sector instead. Shea Harvey pointed to Grady's fitness for the job due to his "creative and intriguing ideas" writing that he was "nothing short of a visionary."
In 2021, Grady assisted in dissolving assets such as Logical Entertainment (after events CEO Lewis Harper turned down an offer to acquire a majority stake) and Labyrinth Global. Over Kohinoor's entire lifespan, it's hard to argue that Gem Hosting wasn't their most significant asset.
Mascots Direct
MascotsDirect.co.uk, and parent company “Mascot Distribution UK Ltd.”, was founded in early 2021 (by Grady and business partner James Ray) as an online retailer of costumes and mascots. Originally located in Southport, the firm was generally prepared to distribute across Britain.
In March 2021, Grady offloaded his stock back onto Ray, and resigned from both his Financial Director job and Board Director position, supposedly to focus on other projects.
Kohinoor Acquisitions
In 2020, Grady and Kohinoor Group CEO Morgan Walton joined together to found Kohinoor Acquisitions. The firm was known for working on Edibox, which was the predecessor of Joe Linsky and Tom Halstead's food box platform Fooboxx.
Grady initially launched the subsidiary as a means to expand Kohinoor via the acquisition and merger of struggling companies. Notably, he led the firm's submission of bids on Jaeger, Bloom, Carnivore, EZ Maal and Samuji - although all were eventually unsuccessful.
The struggle to successfully make the acquisition strategy work concerned the core Kohinoor company who, along with Grady, decided to rebrand Kohinoor Acquisitions to fit a new direction in offerings. This led to the birth of Kohinoor Partnerships, who consulted on food box start-up Edibox for founder and CEO Joe Linsky.
GemHosting
Grady joined the internet domain registrar and web hosting company Gem Hosting in 2020. In 2021, Grady was involved in Gem's total acquisition by tech conglomerate GradyWalton, and resigned his position as Corporate Specialist. As Co-Founder and Vice President at GradyWalton, however, Grady did continue to do work for the then-subsidiary. This continued up until GradyWalton's eventual split, which saw the formation of GemGlobal (owned by Morgan Walton), in which GemHosting became a GemGlobal asset.
Labyrinth Global
In 2020, Grady founded his own consultancy firm, Labyrinth Global, in Southport, where he served as Managing Director until its closure in 2021. Although it was originally created as an African music management company, the COVID-19 pandemic put a spanner in the works. Labyrinth was a joint venture between Grady and Mebin Biju. In late 2020, Grady's stake in the company was acquired by tech conglomerate Kohinoor.
Vacancy4Me
Vacancy4Me.com was co-founded by Grady and Morgan Walton in 2020 in London, United Kingdom. The London side housed the company's communication, client services, and finance teams, while the product development staff was based in Southport.
Initially, Vacancy4Me.com was going to rely on government grants and local investment to run a successful launch on a regional scale - but the COVID-19 pandemic led to British lockdown, killing the careers industry for the foreseeable. The company was forced to close when, in March 2021, the market still hadn't properly recovered.
Logical Entertainment
In 2019, Grady co-founded Logical Entertainment, an entertainment and management company encompassing a range of subjects including music management, content creation, and songwriting. The group was a joint venture between Grady and Leo Wynne, although Wynne resigned shortly afterwards - selling his equity back to Grady to fully sever ties. In late 2019, Logical Entertainment became one of the three merged firms that made up Hydra Incorporated - until its 2020 breakup, which saw the equity to Grady.
Grady later sold a majority stake in Logical Entertainment to Hydra business partner Morgan Walton's company Kohinoor for an undisclosed sum. When Grady joined Kohinoor as Chairman in late 2020, it was on the condition that all his stock ((including that in Logical Entertainment) with the exemption of Retail Rental) would be put under Kohinoor.
After failing to sell a majority stake to events CEO Lewis Harper in mid 2021, Logical Entertainment was permanently closed - citing poor financial performance in comparison to higher priority Kohinoor assets.
Retail Rental
James Ray set up an e-commerce company, Retail Rental, that involved Hydra Inc. CEO Callum L Grady. Marcus Goodyear, General Manager of The Asper Company's London operations, recalls that Grady was a very determined individual. In September 2019, Retail Rental was registered as Retail Rental Ltd., and a domain was secured. The primary aim of Retail Rental was to create the largest, most convenient e-commerce platform for the British mascot and POS industries, as well as raising the general profile of the UK mascot market. By 2021, Retail Rental was rebranded for more focus on the mascot industry. Grady resigned shortly afterwards.
Team Scouse
Grady decided to help the fundraising efforts of Northwest nonprofit group Team Scouse: it needed assistance in location management and logistical issues. Along with his Retail Rental business partner, Grady was instrumental in independently and tirelessly raising money for charities such as Sue Ryder.
Hydra Incorporated
In 2019, Grady co-founded Logical Entertainment, a talent management company and promotional agency. Less than one week after the firm was founded, Logical Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Leo Wynne resigned - citing a personal dispute with Grady (who later bought Wynne's equity for an undisclosed price). The following year, Logical Entertainment merged with technology conglomerate Kohinoor Group and business services company Verve Solutions to expand market reach. Founded by Morgan Walton and Mebin Biju respectively, Kohinoor and Verve already had a deal, in which Kohinoor owned equitable assets in Verve.
Within the merged company (Hydra Incorporated), Grady took over as Chief Executive Officer, despite his relative inexperience at that stage. Grady's preference for ground-up solutions such as theoretical foodtech start-up Lunchbox (over building up subsidiaries), as well as Walton's and Grady's differing personality approach, caused cracks to begin to appear in the company. Due to later management issues and lack of agreement across the firm, Walton attempted to gain control of Hydra via the board and, although it failed, the company was forced to close its doors for good.
Verve Solutions
Grady joined Mebin Biju's Verve Solutions business in 2019 as Corporate Specialist, subsequently creating a turnaround strategy to grow the company's financial development through a series of layoffs and partnerships. Biju himself said about Grady that his “ability to work in different departments in the company was unlike any I've seen before and made a dramatic increase in the productivity level of our company”. From 2019 to 2020, the company's Chief Operating Officer was fired because he was seen by Grady as underqualified for the role, at a time when the company shouldn't have been focusing on higher management staff. A higher emphasis was put on intern and trainee staff, as they were long-term personnel investments who came at a far lower price - as well as being hands-on employees. At this stage, a merger was arranged between Logical Entertainment (headed by Grady), Kohinoor Group (headed by Morgan Walton), and Verve Solutions (headed by Biju), with the resulting conglomerate being Hydra Incorporated. Unfortunately, shortly after Hydra collapsed from interior disputes, Verve was permanently closed.
