Newsmaker: Yuvraj Singh

Batting now for e-commerce

It must be strange for Yuvraj Singh to be in the company of men like Ratan Tata and Azim Premji. Not only is he not an accomplished corporate chieftain, but he is known more for his flamboyance on the cricket field -and outside it, as some would point out. But there he is, like the venerable industrialists, willing to financially back e-commerce start-ups.

Singh, 33, announced at the beginning of the week that his company, awkwardly named YouWeCan to echo the emotional slogan of Yuvi Can, will dole out Rs 40-50 crore to help promising start-ups, and take this investment to around Rs 300 crore in 3-5 years. YouWeCan began as Singh's vehicle for his campaign against cancer, a cause he took up after he had to undergo a three-month treatment for malignancy soon after the 2011 cricket World Cup.

The bare-bones YouWeCan website doesn't give much information besides listing the people who will manage the effort for the cricketer. An easily missed line at the bottom of one of the web pages, however, does invite start-ups to send their profiles and proposals, promising them that "Yuvraj Singh is with you with all he has - brand, marketing strength, technology team and financial consulting. Yuvraj will endorse your business idea and give you the kick-start you need."

Known more as an irrepressible partygoer with a bevy of celebrity candies on his arm, Singh is honest enough to admit that he is not much of a businessman. Unlike many of his compatriots in the Indian team, he hasn't even invested in restaurants that feed off their names, among them Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan and even S Sreesanth, "You don't have to believe I will be a good entrepreneur but you have to believe I can help a lot of people who need the support," was his candid response in an interview he gave to CNBC-TV18 soon after announcing his new interest in e-commerce.

He will rely on his good friends to operationalise the initiative. The e-commerce investment idea will be led by Nishant Singhal, the Punjab cricketer's business advisor for the past half decade. Singhal, a chartered accountant, was earlier with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He has similarly fallen on the support of another ally of long standing, Nishant Jeet Arora, a former mediaperson, for the work at the Yuvraj Singh Centre of Excellence, which, in the words of Singh himself, has been set up "to create a world where young cricketers are given a stage to learn and grow - with the guidance of experts, modern methods, best training practices and world class facilities". The centre runs cricket camps in Gwalior, Bilaspur, Noida, Gurgaon and Dwarka, with individual sponsors putting in around Rs 50,000 per year to adopt each underprivileged talent.

It is ironic that in the same week that Singh decided to hold the hands of beginners dreaming of financial success, his father, former cricketer and Punjabi actor Yograj Singh, should have called upon destiny to render the captain of the Indian one-day team, M S Dhoni, penniless. Singh quickly stepped in to soothe ruffled feathers, as he had just days before the World Cup in Australia began when his father had ranted similarly. The elder Singh's frustrations were triggered by the exclusion of his son from the Indian cricket team. Once an indispensable Boy in Blue - which Indian fan will ever forget the six sixes he hit off Stuart Broad in the 2007 T20 World Cup match in Durban, South Africa? - Singh, paternal hopes notwithstanding, isn't the performer he used to be. That, though, hasn't stopped teams in the Indian Premier League from snapping him up for ridiculous sums. Last year, Royal Challengers Bangalore paid him Rs 14 crore. In return Singh only managed a middling on-field dividend for the franchise. This year, the Delhi Daredevils broke the IPL auction record, splashing out Rs 16 crore for him. Now that, as an earlier Business Standard report pointed out, is more than the worth of 1,079 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Perhaps, Singh then does deserve his place up there with Tata and Premji!