Poultry company rescues T&TMark Pouchet
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161544878Friday, October 16th 2009
PROUD TO HELP: Neil Prashad
When neither the Trinidad and Tobago government nor a local company had the foresight to fund the national senior cricket team, a Trinidad and Tobago-born businessman managed to get India's largest poultry company to sponsor them in the Airtel Champion's League 20/20 Tournament.
Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board president Deryck Murray said yesterday that the sponsorship deal which was in the works about three weeks before the start of the Asian competition, was only nailed down a few days before the T&T squad's departure.
The story of how the logo of Asia's largest poultry company Venky's (India) Limited, which employs 2.5 million people in the Asian sub continent, became emblazoned across the chests of the T&T senior cricketers began when T&T skipper Daren Ganga told his friend Neil Prashad about the troubles of his squad to secure sponsorship for the tournament.
Prashad, an executive vice president of Bala Entertainment, the personal media company of Venky's owner Dr Balaji Rao, introduced the idea to Rao.
"By birth I'm Trinidadian. As a result of that when I found out through my friendship with Daren Ganga that the team had no sponsor, I was more than proud and happy to present Dr Balaji Rao for him to sponsor T&T through Venky's," Prashad revealed. Rao was said to have viewed tapes of Trinidad and Tobago senior cricketers in action, including their Stanford 20/20 winning performance.
"Dr Rao said 'I am proud to sponsor Trinidad and Tobago and extremely proud of the team thus far and the performance of all players and the captain Daren Ganga. I have intentions to expand my business in the Caribbean and Latin America based out of Trinidad, so this is just a snapshot of my cooperation with T&T by supporting the national team of T&T'. That's a direct quote," Prashad said in a phone interview from India yesterday.
It seems that Dr Rao's enthusiasm is shared by the public in India with the sports pages of dailies hailing and praising the efforts and victories of the T&T team in their first two games.
Despite all the hype and thrill that the local team has generated in the tournament, Prashad was a little saddened that Ganga and company did not have a single sponsor except Venky's for the competition and that the T&T Government failed to have the vision to launch their country as a product in India.
"The bottom line is that it is very commendable for a tiny island like T&T to be performing so well and doing so well. And I'm a bit disappointed that potentially more than one billion people are talking about and watching their teams and there has not been one advertisement about T&T, nothing from the tourism department to say come visit our island, the land of Brian Lara. Nothing to show T&T as a business card. It is an opportunity lost," he lamented.
Prashad added that Lara's name was associated with the West Indies team in India and for the first time the masses in India were talking about the Caribbean country.
"Shaggy and Chaka Khan performed here at the opening but there was nothing to showcase T&T, no soca artiste nothing to send that message that this is our country and you should come visit," he said. He was however quick to add that Venky's would be looking into increasing their involvement with the Caribbean and T&T in particular.
