Newsmaker: Anuradha Desai

Joining global sports' premier league

Scoring India Inc’s first goal from Pune in the English Premier League (EPL) isn’t something you hear every day. But Anuradha Desai, chairperson of the Rs 3,850-crore Venkateshwara Hatcheries (VH) Group, prefers to keep a low profile. Did you know that as the largest fully-integrated poultry group in Asia, her group’s operations are spread across 17 countries in Southeast Asia and the Middle East?

But that’s the way she has been running the company for the last 12 years, along with brothers Venkatesh and Balaji. Now, she has pulled off a coup by buying an EPL team, when even the mightiest names like Mukesh and Anil Ambani and Subrata Roy failed.

Known for their eggs, poultry, processed chicken and other ready-to-eats under the ubiquitous Venky’s brand as well as poultry vaccines, VH is all set to buy cash-strapped Blackburn Rovers for £46 million. So what if the team is languishing at the bottom half of the league table!

Desai is a soft-spoken boss, known for her easy yet no-nonsense approach. But owning a football club won’t be easy. Nevertheless, her philosophy — investing in relationships take time and people need freedom to work towards a goal — should work even with the egos of football stars.

This is not the first time Desai will face a stiff challenge. But in her favour is the fact that in the past she has proved wrong all those who doubted she would live up the reputation of her father and founder of the group, B V Rao.

The payout for Blackburn is, quite literally, chicken feed for a company that clocked close to $1 billion in sales. But Desai sees it as a strategic move. Indians are the largest minority group in the Lancashire town of Blackburn, and if you are looking to connect with a community, then what better way than buying out the local football team?

People involved with the group say for a while the company has been looking at widening its consumer interface. Expanding Venky’s XPRS fast food franchise has been one option. The strategy, said company officials, is to grow the business in three identified continents: Europe, Asia and Africa and “to identify major sports properties and assets to attain brand visibility”.

It recently roped in Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt and Australian pace ace Brett Lee to launch the Venky’s brand in Dhaka. It is also in negotiations to advertise in the upcoming cricket season in India and South Africa. Being the largest poultry exporter to Russia meant using Elena Dementieva, a top 10 tennis pro on the ATP circuit, to promote the brand during the US Open. Venky’s also supported swashbuckling Darren Ganga’s Trinidad & Tobago cricket team at the T20 Champions League.

To be fair, using sports to promote a business is not a recent fancy for Desai, but a decade-old initiative. Venky’s has a range of nutritional supplements for athletes and has worked closely with sports authorities in India since 2008 to improve the health and diet of Indian sportsmen and women.

So, when Paul Robinson or Senegalese international El Hadji Diouf sport the Venky’s logo on their jerseys when they head for the kick-off, one can say ‘mission accomplished’. “Football in India is gaining popularity… in Kolkata, Kerala and is also growing in other states also. We will also consider investing here in a couple of years or so,” she said. That will certainly be another feather in Desai’s cap.