Satyam sponsors sport?
By Techgirl

Sramana Mitra is a well known tech success story in USA.  After a Masters from MIT, Sramana founded three successful companies and consults with a number of organization.  She also writes for international media including Forbes.

Recently, Sramana turned her mind from technology and startups to how India could win more medals at the Olympics.  In an article for DNA, she offered a plan that would replicate the success of Indian cricket from a negative Rs. 5 lakh a year sport to the multi billion dollar business it is today. The plan would involve creating a TV sports channel NCTV (Non Cricket TV) that would broadcast every sport except cricket.  10 sporting disciplines ranging from aquatics, athletics, badminton, boxing, gymnastics, hockey, table tennis, shooting and wrestling would be selected to begin with. Each discipline would have 50 training academies spread in smaller towns in India.  Each of the 500 academies would be sponsored by big business including tech companies like Airtel, Nokia, Google, Microsoft etc.  And that such a sporting framework would win us medals and all the joys that sports bring.

Techgoss quite likes this idea. Sramana is one person I genuinely admire.  In our silly irreverent fashion we can offer a few suggestions as well.  Only Indian companies should be allowed to sponsor Indian teams where the names synch e.g Satyam Swimming academy, TCS Table Tennis academy, Aegis Acquatics, Wipro wrestling, HCL hockey, Sutherland Shooting and Genpact Gymnastics.

Also, we feel that NASSCOM can replace the Indian Olympic Association headed by politician Suresh Kalmadi.  The politics in both the organization is equally vicious.

Last but not the least; we will not see empty seats like what happened in the Beijing Olympics.  Every Call Centre in India will set aside their best Agents and 1 hour every day for 3 months to ensure all tickets are sold.

I would like to gently warn organizations like TCS.  This new sporting structure will not allow your computer programmers on the ‘bench’ to come and play when they feel like.  And Satyam will not be permitted to cut salaries if the swimming team does not win a medal in the first year. And Mr. Murthy from Infosys, we all respect you but we cannot be fair and play the national anthems of each of the Gold, Silver and Bronze medallists after every final.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com/