Indian soccer’s six-year goal

Rohinton Soli Screwvala answers to Ronnie, which incidentally is the nickname of the 2014 FIFA Footballer of the Year Cristiano Ronaldo. That was pretty much the only, admittedly tenuous, connection between the former UTV head and football. Until recently, that is. On the back of his entry into sport by owning a franchise in the Pro Kabbadi League, Screwvala has made a surprising and rather tangential move into building talent in Indian football. U Sports, a part of his firm Unilazer Ventures, has announced a tie-up with German football club TFG Hoffenheim. His plan: Get Indian kids to train with the club in Germany for six years and make money by managing their careers in the long term. He spoke with Fortune India about this audacious attempt to inject quality into Indian football. Edited excerpts:

Why football?
Football has the highest level of interest, among emerging sports, in the country. We were evaluating a bid for a team [in the Indian Super League] and we asked ourselves what else we could do in football. We can keep saying we have a great league, but we are ranked 150th in the world. For us, the opportunity was in building talent rather than a team.

We believe a long-term framework will be a game changer. So, we are choosing 90 kids from under 13, under 15, and under 17 to train in Germany for six years. If we were to do a three-month thing in India and bring coaches down, it would not have made any difference.
You have to constantly play in a place where there is discipline. The environment in Germany is not something you get here.

What’s the structure you have in mind?
This year we will go to 50 cities to look at 15,000 students, and narrow the list down to 300. The Germans have their own benchmarks. They will record everything, from technique to playing style, and shortlist the 30 they want to train. After that, it depends on each of those 30 making a life-changing decision to make football a career.

It is a full six-year commitment. They will be in Germany, training at the club, just like any young European player. Their schooling will also be a part of it. Next year we will do the selection in 100 cities, and take 90 kids.

How much will it cost? What about those who won’t be able to afford this?
The cost per child per year is about Rs 50 lakh. This includes the football training, board and lodging, two return trips to India, and academics. With every group of 30, we are sending three teachers to teach them the CBSE curriculum.

We will try to subsidise about 40% of that through sponsorship and the parents will have to pay the balance of Rs 30 lakh. Some of the talent we are finding are orphans or from financially weaker sections but are phenomenal players. To ensure that they do not miss out, we will have a quota of up to 33% who will get more comprehensive scholarships.

Does this initiative have an altruistic angle or is it a business proposition?
I have a large foundation in the nonprofit Swades, which is doing a lot of work and will suck us dry (laughs). I’m not a glutton for further altruism. The football initiative is for profit. I don’t think I can make a 20-year commitment on this unless we feel that it is for profit. I have no visibility of that profit for the next six years because we will be in investment mode.

We will manage their career for 15 years after they finish the six years of training. By that time the ecosystem we create will have about 450 footballers playing anywhere in the world. This is like any other initiative by a social entrepreneur doing it for impact and profit. I have the luxury of not raising any outside funding and I don’t have to keep making business plans.

Has anyone done something like this before?
No. The Bundesliga grilled us for six months, asking if we were going to stay the course because this is an unusual venture we were proposing.

What types of sponsorships are you looking at?
Many German companies in India are interested in partnering us. German clubs have close relations with the companies. Some of them are owned by the companies. There is also a fair amount of interest from consumer brands and sports brands in India.
The big question is how to start marketing and managing the careers of these players from the second year onwards. If a few of these players can feature in the 2017 U-17 World Cup, that will be big.

It is a life-changing decision for the parents and the kids, especially in India. How will you convince them that football is an option?
We will be meeting every parent and child in the top 100 [of the 300 selected]. The parents are not making a decision to send their kid abroad—they are making a decision to make their kids professional footballers. We have met 12 families so far but that has been enough of a dipstick to know we will get there. The challenges are socio-economic, which means, can they afford it? They are also worried about what happens at the end of six years: What if the children have to struggle for another four years? But the parents know that their children may not excel in academics even if they stay in India.

What do the Germans gain?
They feel that if one in seven persons in the world is from India, there must be a talent base of some kind. They have opened up. Schools there are giving us classrooms to run our classes. We looked at various countries and felt that from a training perspective, the Germans go about things in an extremely scientific manner. The government there also said that it would take this programme as an Indo-German venture.

Do you play football?
No. I don’t make movies either, but I started a movie studio.