IIM alumnus prefer soccer over bank

For the diehard fans of Indian Football, Satyajit Sadanandan, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, can be of some hope. Sadanand aims to develop football on the business model of European clubs.

Updated on: Mar 11, 2006, 13:20:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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For the diehard fans of Indian Football, Satyajit Sadanandan, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow, can be of some hope. Sadanand aims to develop football on the business model of European clubs. As a first step to this, he has opted for a job stint in a top soccer professional club of Europe.

This was when he was offered a lucrative package of Rs 9 lakh per annum from JP Morgan Chase, a global bank. But Sadanand wants to pursue his passion for football. The crucial question is how can this model be developed in India? “Football clubs can become self-reliant by generating additional resources through business ventures,” he says.

There is one club Baroda based Providence that Sadanand can implement on what he learns in the European clubs. “Providence is probably the only club in India which is trying to sustain itself by engaging in business activities. The business ventures were initiated to generate funds for promoting football among the village schools in Gujarat and to generate employment opportunities outside the sporting arena,” he said.

He has already worked in Providence and knows the company well. “I worked there before joining IIM and know their football sustaining system very well. My exposure in Europe will help to strengthen the business football model,” he added. Sadanand claims that he has received invitations from some of the top football clubs of Europe like Celtic United and FC Cologne for a learning experience.

“They have offered to give me exposure in the modern methods of soccer coaching and an insight into the best practices of professional soccer management,” he said. He is seeking corporate sponsorship to fund his trip as the European clubs are not offering any stipend.

“The response is encouraging,” he says. Sadanand’s batchmates, 249 students, got 491 offers in all. The highest package was of Rs 36 lakh per annum, he informs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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