After captaining London’s schools cricket team and opening the bowling for Middlesex Colts, he began to establish a presence on the capital’s dance music scene while still studying for a degree in history and politics at the University of East Anglia.
DJing at house parties and for pirate stations including LWR led him to his first job in the music industry – as a junior partner with Simon Goffe’s Heavyweight Management from 1992-4, where he worked with UK chart hip-hop producers Double Trouble and Rebel MC and the Stoke Newington drum and bass band Shut Up And Dance among others.
[3] After starting his own PR company Media Village, which helped Sony records launch the UK careers of The Fugees and Jamiroquai by adapting the US promotional innovation of ‘Street Teams’ to the domestic market, Jobanputra co-founded (with college friend Paul Franklyn) the Outcaste label in 1995.
The label's debut release – Artful Dodger featuring Craig David's "Re-Rewind" – sold 700,000 copies and marked the point at which the UK garage genre moved from the underground into the pop mainstream.
During this three year timespan, Jobanputra also co-wrote an international top 10 hit – Jay Sean's "Eyes on You" – with Norwegian production team Stargate, and launched a legal challenge over rights to the Relentless brand name.