Nass­er Khan

Venky Mysore is the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Kolkata Knight Rid­ers (KKR) since 2010. And the KKR is the IPL home of T&T's crick­et­ing su­per­star Sunil Nar­ine. Mysore is large­ly re­spon­si­ble for pop­u­lar Bol­ly­wood film star Shah Rukh Khan and his busi­ness part­ners Juhi Chawla and her hus­band Jay Mehta's ac­qui­si­tion of the T&T Red Steel Fran­chise in the CPL (Caribbean Pre­mier League).

These days, the KKR is on Mysore's mind. Since he's at the helm of the KKR, the team has won the IPL in 2012 and 2014 due to the strate­gies he has de­vel­oped and spear­head­ed. The team is now a huge­ly pop­u­lar and well-known brand around the world. KKR al­so qual­i­fied for the Cham­pi­ons League in 2011, 2012, and reached the fi­nal in 2014. KKR al­so be­came the first IPL fran­chise to break even and turn a prof­it.

KKR has launched a unique dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tive through which it has achieved a lead­er­ship po­si­tion on the so­cial me­dia and on­line plat­forms. The fan com­mu­ni­ty has grown to 14 mil­lion in 2015, which has helped in mon­etis­ing the fran­chise. KKR al­so pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary which has been broad­cast by the Dis­cov­ery chan­nel ti­tled–Liv­ing with KKR.

In 2013, Mysore was al­so asked to be­come the CEO of Red Chill­ies En­ter­tain­ment, the film pro­duc­tion Com­pa­ny owned by Khan. Since tak­ing over, he has been work­ing on build­ing a new busi­ness mod­el for Red Chill­ies to be able to pro­duce films and con­tent for var­i­ous plat­forms.

Pri­or to join­ing KKR, he had a very long and suc­cess­ful ca­reer span­ning 25 years in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor. He was the In­dia Coun­try Head of Sun Life of Cana­da from Jan­u­ary 2007 to Oc­to­ber 2010. Pri­or to that, he had a long ca­reer span­ning 21 years with MetLife. He start­ed his ca­reer in the US in 1985 and held sev­er­al po­si­tions of in­creas­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in Wash­ing­ton DC, Pitts­burgh, PA, and New York City.

He sub­se­quent­ly took on a se­nior role in MetLife's In­ter­na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions in 1997 and was part of the start-up teams for MetLife's busi­ness­es in In­done­sia and Hong Kong. He was re­spon­si­ble for start­ing up MetLife's busi­ness in In­dia and was the CEO and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of MetLife In­dia un­til De­cem­ber 2006.

He prides him­self on hav­ing been an ac­com­plished crick­eter who rep­re­sent­ed the Madras Uni­ver­si­ty in crick­et, played a lot com­pet­i­tive­ly, and is a pas­sion­ate fol­low­er of the game.

He and his wife, Veena, are the proud par­ents of three chil­dren.

The Sun­day Guardian in­ter­viewed the af­fa­ble Mysore ear­li­er this week in an­tic­i­pa­tion of to­day's CPL fi­nal at the Queen's Park Oval. Here are some ex­cerpts:

Q: Tell us about your ear­ly years in life. Where were you born and where did you grow up?

A: I was born in the south­ern city of Ben­galu­ru (then Ban­ga­lore), In­dia, and grew up in Chen­nai (then Madras). I was a good crick­eter and had vi­sions and as­pi­ra­tions of rep­re­sent­ing my coun­try but aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits put paid to that as I head­ed off to the USA for fur­ther acad­e­mia, but I have come full cir­cle back to my first pas­sion in life, that of crick­et, al­beit on a dif­fer­ent field of play. I did play at the fair­ly high lev­el when I rep­re­sent­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Madras be­fore I head­ed off to the US.

Any dis­clo­sures/plans re­lat­ed to T&T Red Steel 2016 and be­yond to sen­si­tise our read­ers?

Not as yet. As soon as we made the de­ci­sion to ac­quire the Trin­ba­go fran­chise, lit­er­al­ly a week be­fore the start of the tour­na­ment, my idea was for me and a cou­ple of my KKR col­leagues to come and ob­serve and ab­sorb every­thing that goes on here. We are go­ing through a learn­ing curve on how things work here and un­der­stand­ing the en­vi­ron­ment and any sen­si­tiv­i­ties so that we can achieve the right uni­for­mi­ty and in­te­gra­tion to make it a suc­cess. Once we com­plete the tour­na­ment, we will sit down and for­mu­late our plans.

Why do you think fran­chise crick­et has be­come so pop­u­lar?

Fran­chise sports has ex­ist­ed in oth­er parts of the world–US, UK etc. I think the com­bi­na­tion of the prod­uct and the en­try of pri­vate en­ter­prise cre­ates the right com­bi­na­tion for the fans and pub­lic at large to en­joy the en­ter­tain­ment. Over time, there is a strong emo­tion­al at­tach­ment that a coun­try or city de­vel­ops to­wards the team and it be­comes "THEIR" team. This adds to the fan ex­pe­ri­ence and is per­haps the main rea­son for the suc­cess.

What is unique about the CPL com­pared to the oth­er fran­chise-based T20 crick­et around the world?

IPL has by far been the mar­quee T20 tour­na­ment be­cause of the com­mer­cials around it and the huge crowds, and the fol­low­ing. What I ob­serve in the Caribbean is the "par­ty" at­mos­phere and the unique way in which the fans en­joy the game with mu­sic as a com­mon thread. So it makes it that much more en­joy­able to watch and dur­ing those three hours, they have a great time. This is sure­ly unique.

What is your role in bring­ing the 'Shahrukh/Kolkata Knight Rid­ers' brand to the T&T Red Steel?

Af­ter I was en­trust­ed with the role as the CEO, I have for­mu­lat­ed plans for growth and was al­ways on the look­out for op­por­tu­ni­ties. While we had been of­fered the Trinidad fran­chise when the league start­ed in 2013, I sup­pose the tim­ing wasn't right and we had passed. This time around when CPL ap­proached us, we felt we should eval­u­ate it again. We are very glad that we have moved for­ward.

Com­ing from an in­ter­na­tion­al and glob­al busi­ness back­ground has po­si­tioned me well to po­si­tion in T&T the vi­sion of repli­cat­ing the suc­cess­ful mod­els I have de­vel­oped...it's a mat­ter of "think glob­al, act lo­cal." We aim to be a suc­cess for the ben­e­fit of all the stake­hold­ers.

"Mysore..." an in­ter­est­ing last name giv­en that it is the name of a city in In­dia, any con­nec­tion?

Yes, Mysore is a very fa­mous city in South In­dia with a lot of his­to­ry and her­itage. My fa­ther's side of the fam­i­ly came from there and hence the sur­name.

What has your ex­pe­ri­ences been like in this part of the world?

The first thing no­tice­able is the warm hos­pi­tal­i­ty. Peo­ple seem to be quite re­laxed and al­ways ready for a par­ty! It's great to see this. We al­so ex­pect to build a very suc­cess­ful busi­ness around the fran­chise and hope that the peo­ple of Trin­ba­go will be proud of what we build to­geth­er.

How would you de­scribe your man­age­ment style?

I be­lieve in lead­er­ship with a vi­sion for growth. I al­so be­lieve that this can be achieved on­ly through col­lab­o­ra­tion and part­ner­ships. Peo­ple are al­ways the biggest as­sets and when you treat them well, they will go to any lengths to achieve the com­mon goals that are set.

What two words would you use to de­scribe your­self, one be­gin­ning with 'v' the oth­er with 'm', your ini­tials?

Nev­er thought of this, but per­haps "Valiant" and "Mag­nan­i­mous."

Any fi­nal words you would like to share with our read­ers?

I would like to thank every­one for the warm wel­come we have re­ceived in Trin­ba­go and the Caribbean at large. It in­spires us to do a good job with the fran­chise and cre­ate a bond that hope­ful­ly will last for many years to come.