New TNFA president Shanmugam sets forth his agenda to revive the sport in the State
Former Tamil Nadu football team captain S. Shanmugam, who was elected president of the Tamil Nadu Football Association (TNFA) last Saturday in an election held for the first time since 2014, spoke about his agenda over a phone call on Saturday.
'Every year, the association's registration is to be renewed with the Registrar of Societies under the Societies Registration Act (1860). This hasn't been done for a few years. Thus, the association is unable to receive grants from the SDAT and AIFF. So, my foremost task is to renew our registration,' he said.
Claiming that the State championships for all age categories, including the senior category, have been discontinued for several years now, he said that he aims to revive them.
'The probables for the Nationals were selected from those tournaments. Around 40 would be selected first, and 20 would then be shortlisted for a 10-15 day camp for the Nationals. I intend to bring that back into practice.
'For instance, the junior (boys and girls) National football championship is to be held from July 10 to 25. For that, the State championships have been planned to be held for boys in Virudhunagar and for girls in Dindigul from June 20 to 27,' he said.
The 62-year-old said that he wants to make it mandatory for the District associations to conduct their annual league, like the Chennai Football Association's senior division league.
'There was this Champions Club Trophy for the District league champions, which has been discontinued for around nine years now. The event helped clubs earn points for entry into the I-League. Consequently, the possibility of our (TN) clubs getting into the I-League has reduced. So, it is to be revived as well,' he added.
Saying that he also intends to revive the premier National tournaments of the past across the State — like the Vittal Trophy and TFA Shield in Chennai and the Rockfort Trophy in Tiruchi — by getting into talks with the original sponsors, he added that there is a Super League Kerala-type 'Tamil Nadu Premier Football League' in the pipeline.
'It will have eight teams and will be played in the home-and-away format.'
He further stated that a four- or five-member advisory committee will be formed, naming two members: the former CFA senior division league club and I-League champion Chennai City FC owner, Rohit Ramesh, and the Viva Chennai FC (CFA senior division) and Gokulam Kerala FC (I-League) owner, Praveen.
Rohit currently also owns a minority stake of the Cambodian Club Angkor Tiger FC.
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The Hindu
10 hours ago
- The Hindu
New TNFA president Shanmugam sets forth his agenda to revive the sport in the State
Former Tamil Nadu football team captain S. Shanmugam, who was elected president of the Tamil Nadu Football Association (TNFA) last Saturday in an election held for the first time since 2014, spoke about his agenda over a phone call on Saturday. 'Every year, the association's registration is to be renewed with the Registrar of Societies under the Societies Registration Act (1860). This hasn't been done for a few years. Thus, the association is unable to receive grants from the SDAT and AIFF. So, my foremost task is to renew our registration,' he said. Claiming that the State championships for all age categories, including the senior category, have been discontinued for several years now, he said that he aims to revive them. 'The probables for the Nationals were selected from those tournaments. Around 40 would be selected first, and 20 would then be shortlisted for a 10-15 day camp for the Nationals. I intend to bring that back into practice. 'For instance, the junior (boys and girls) National football championship is to be held from July 10 to 25. For that, the State championships have been planned to be held for boys in Virudhunagar and for girls in Dindigul from June 20 to 27,' he said. The 62-year-old said that he wants to make it mandatory for the District associations to conduct their annual league, like the Chennai Football Association's senior division league. 'There was this Champions Club Trophy for the District league champions, which has been discontinued for around nine years now. The event helped clubs earn points for entry into the I-League. Consequently, the possibility of our (TN) clubs getting into the I-League has reduced. So, it is to be revived as well,' he added. Saying that he also intends to revive the premier National tournaments of the past across the State — like the Vittal Trophy and TFA Shield in Chennai and the Rockfort Trophy in Tiruchi — by getting into talks with the original sponsors, he added that there is a Super League Kerala-type 'Tamil Nadu Premier Football League' in the pipeline. 'It will have eight teams and will be played in the home-and-away format.' He further stated that a four- or five-member advisory committee will be formed, naming two members: the former CFA senior division league club and I-League champion Chennai City FC owner, Rohit Ramesh, and the Viva Chennai FC (CFA senior division) and Gokulam Kerala FC (I-League) owner, Praveen. Rohit currently also owns a minority stake of the Cambodian Club Angkor Tiger FC.
Mint
20 hours ago
- Mint
For Sai Srinivas of Mobile Premier League, the game is always on
It's easy for people to put a value to a loss they've had," says Garimella Sai Srinivas Kiran, the co-founder of gaming company M-League, which runs the Mobile Premier League (MPL). '(But) It's hard to put a value to these intangible gains, right? You only notice them in the long term. In the short term, you only see the pain." Startup founders tend to be philosophical, a by-product of betting big on a non-existent product and making it work, despite the obstacles and the body blows. The seven-year-old skill-gaming platform MPL. which has free and paid components and a portfolio of over 60 games, probably does not qualify as a startup anymore, but tends to fall into the bracket by virtue of being a tech company. M-League, which now has five companies including the Berlin-based GameDuell, has a portfolio that includes skill gaming, free-to-play games, game publishing and AAA game studio (high-budget, high-profile games). With over 220 million users across MPL and GameDuell in 32 countries, a unicorn valuation as of the last fund raise in 2021, presence in Asia, Europe, North America and Africa, and 600-odd employees, the company straddles the challenging business of skill gaming. Its revenue in FY24 was $130 million. Sai was in Mumbai in early May for the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (Waves), a government-sponsored event. In the business centre of the Sofitel Hotel in Bandra Kurla Complex, close to the venue for Waves where MPL had a booth, the 37-year-old, dressed casually in a collared T-shirt, slacks and a cap, orders an Americano. He has an easy-going manner, and a dimpled boyish smile that he uses liberally. Sai is temporarily stationed in Singapore these days, where M-League is headquartered, while his co-founder Shubh Malhotra and Galactus Funware Technology Pvt Ltd, the operating entity for MPL, are based in Bengaluru. Since losing his father last year, Sai says he has started valuing his time more and separating his professional and personal identities. 'One of my core philosophies in life is anonymity. I want to focus on my business," he explains. 'I really enjoy travelling; I can travel literally 60 days with one suitcase, keep moving from one place to the other." Born in Hyderabad—his father was a deputy manager in a bank, mother a teacher in a government school—Sai's academic journey fell into two innings. He was 'not very good" in the beginning, but an inexplicable switch turned after class VI. By the time he reached the board exam stage, he wanted to study aerospace engineering. Also read: What Siddharth Roy Kapur wants: Fresh stories told in unique voices He got into IIT Kanpur which had, among other things, a dedicated leased line for fast (for those times) internet speed. However, he soon became disenchanted with the education system there and his enthusiasm for making aircraft withered away. 'For people coming from a normal background like us, the first important level of freedom we need to attain is mastery of our time," says Sai, who graduated in 2010 as one of the few in his batch without a campus placement. One of his highlights at IIT turned out to be organising the cultural festival, Antaragni, which included the music festival Synchronicity. What this first, quasi-entrepreneurial voluntary role did was to get him access to his first job, which was a brief stint as product manager with a digital company in Delhi. He was soon recruited by Zynga in Bengaluru as a game designer, though he had no such experience. 'I played a lot of games while growing up," he admits. 'My dad and I were always particular about getting new gadgets, like the Nokia 3310 and the (gaming console) Super Nintendo." Zynga, with its popular game Farmville, was going 'absolute gangbusters" at the time, which put Sai in the 'right place, right time". It also helped that he didn't like Delhi too much and moving to Bengaluru was not a challenge. The third benefit, unbeknownst to him at the time, was that the friend's place he temporarily stayed at had another roommate, Malhotra. A year-and-a-half later, Sai and Malhotra got ready with their first venture, CREO Tech. Their first product, Tewee, was a wireless HDMI dongle to stream videos over a Wi-Fi network, like the Amazon Firestick. The idea seemed to fit in at a time when streaming services were making their forays into the country. 'We were foolish enough to say let's make hardware," he says now. 'We used to download these documents in Chinese and spend days translating them and figuring out what they hacked our way to getting the product out." They sold over 50,000 units, but making hardware was challenging. Other similar products were getting into the market; the duo realised they needed to pivot. In the company of some 'smart engineers" they hired through their college network, their next venture was an Android-based operating system and smartphone, which also turned out to be an error in hindsight. 'I'll tell you the problem with making a phone and with hardware in general," he says. 'For example, let's assume I ship software and I left a bug in it. I'm just going to patch the software and I'll fix it. Life is okay, all good. With hardware, even if you make one mistake, the amount of time it's going to take to correct that mistake in the next iteration and then get it right—it's just massive." After several struggles, managing to make only a few thousand of the product Creo Mark 1, they sold the company to messenger service Hike in 2016-17. 'If a river is flowing downstream and you're standing on the bank and you see this guy on a boat going really fast, you tend to assume that it's the person rowing. But it's actually the underlying river. That's the market: If you're in the right place, right time, right market, even if you are really stupid, you'll be okay," says Sai. After going through a period of angst, when they felt like they would never work together again, Malhotra and Sai made a deal not to have friends as employees, and that 'the outcome is always more important than output". Having decided that their next turn would be in the field of online gaming, because of his experience in the field, the newly formed Galactus Funware went live with the MPL in September 2018. With about $5.5 million ( ₹36.5 crore at the time) at the get-go, a fairly large seed round, from Sequoia Capital, their ascent was rapid—a term sheet in April, an early team by May and the first prototype by July. A friends and family round by end of August leading up to the launch. By December, MPL had a million daily active users. But the challenges were continuous and constant. In May 2019, MPL was kicked out of the Play Store due to Google's developer policy (it relaxed its policy on real-money gaming last year), along with other gaming platforms like Dream11. 'We would be the only company in India's ecosystem that started, raised a lot of money, got to a million daily active users and shut its doors within the year," Sai says grinning. Then by the second half of 2019 they almost ran out of money, looking to raise a bridge round which came in the form of $90m led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital. '2019 for me was the most foundationally painful year. If Creo was tough from a different standpoint, this was toughness induced by my own stupidity," he says. Cricketer Virat Kohli came on board as their brand ambassador. The following year, MPL signed on with the Board of Control for Cricket in India to be the kit sponsor for the Indian team. With the pandemic, the founders had to navigate working remotely, and between 2020-21, the company went from 120 employees to 1,200, perhaps hiring too many people too fast. 'In my 10 years of doing start-ups, I believe, that is the most unpardonable mistake," he admits. As MPL went global, especially into the US in July 2021, and acquired European company GameDuell in early 2022, 'one of the smartest things to have done", it also laid off 10% of its force and shut down its Indonesia office. But the business, on the back of the pandemic-induced lockdown that catalysed the online gaming industry, grew by 50%. Just when 2023 seemed on the up, hitting 200 million users and a foray into Africa, the government in August announced a 28% GST on funds online gaming companies collect from customers. Mint had in November quoted a report by gaming-focused venture capital firm Lumikai, which had India's gaming market growing 23% year-on-year by revenue to $3.8 billion in 2023-24 despite 28% GST on online gaming. Propelled by the pandemic-induced lockdowns, online gaming is booming, despite some amount of social stigma, and some legal battles, most of which have been dismissed by the courts. 'We looked at this entire GST thing and said this is essentially the start line being redrawn," remembers Sai. MPL laid off 350 employees—half of its force—to survive the tax burden in 2023. Recovery was aided by GameDuell, which helped grow revenue more than three times. MPL started to take off in the US and Brazil, with 40% of its current revenues coming from abroad. 'It's a personal ambition that we want to build a product that stands globally," Sai explains. 'The professional ambition is that things are evolving in a developing country, so there is no certainty for a business to thrive." While MPL as a business competes with platforms like WinZO and Zupee among others, it is more comparable to Nazara Technologies, which is publicly listed. Sai, though, prefers to see his competition coming from Chinese gaming conglomerate Tencent. As he gets ready to head back to Waves, he talks about reading, spending a lot of time just being idle, really enjoying the mundane. 'One of the reasons why I enjoy living in Singapore," he says thoughtfully, 'or spending time with my partner in Dubai, is that in India, these amazing pleasures of doing your own domestic chores have been taken away thanks to the massive amount of help, which is great. But I really enjoy doing my breakfast, putting my clothes in these daily rituals." Also read: Vaibhav Kala of Aquaterra Adventures: The outdoors man
Time of India
a day ago
- Time of India
Ange Postecoglou Sacked: Tottenham Hotspur make surprise move, remove manager despite first major trophy in 17 years
Ange Postecoglou (AP Photo) NEW DELHI: Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur on Friday announced the dismissal of their manager Ange Postecoglou, shortly after the Australian guided the side to their first trophy in 17 years through the Europa League triumph. The victory over Manchester United with a 1-0 scoreline in Bilbao marked Tottenham's first European success in 41 years, additionally securing them a Champions League spot for the upcoming season. However, the club's dismal domestic performance, their worst since the 1976-77 relegation season, resulted in Postecoglou's departure. Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW! "Following a review of performances and after significant reflection, the Club can announce that Ange Postecoglou has been relieved of his duties," according to a statement posted on Tottenham's official X account. The Australian's tenure ended precisely two years after his appointment from Celtic, with chairman Daniel Levy making the final decision. The club's Premier League campaign concluded with 22 defeats from 38 matches, placing them 17th, just above Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton, who faced relegation. "The Board has unanimously concluded that it is in the best interests of the club for a change to take place," the statement continued. "Whilst winning the Europa League this season ranks as one of the club's greatest moments, we cannot base our decision on emotions aligned to this triumph."
