Interview with Anand Krishnan (FidelisWorld), United Sikkim FC

I had the chance to meet and speak at length with Anand Krishnan, the Executive Chairman of FidelisWorld, who are the majority shareholders in United Sikkim FC. FidelisWorld co-owns the club along with football icon Baichung Bhutia and singer Shankar Mahadevan. We speak about the club and their plans with the club for the future.


You have now been involved with Indian football for about a year. How has the journey been for you and your company with Baichung Bhutia, United Sikkim FC and Indian football in general?

We are enjoying it thoroughly! Football is something which is part of my sports fan passion that I have and football is a sport which has only ways to go up in India.

With United Sikkim FC and Baichung the journey thus far has been great. But there have been hiccups with the bureaucracy and it only can get better. We are trying to do our bit to have one of the best clubs from the governance perspective - treat players with total respect, give them their dues, give them the benefits and take care of them; so that they can have a free mind to play the game. We are working towards giving them the necessary comfort within the club and other clubs in India are noticing that.

We look forward to our team getting into the I-League this season!


Thats the big question. How important is it to ensure that USFC have an I-League status next season?

We have done the necessary home work. We brought in a good, new coach (Belgian Philippe de Ridder); have talented youngsters, the team has now trained together for close to a year and that is very important then we nearly made it last year. So the team can only be better with the amount of time spend together.

We are also trying to do a few other things as well. We just not only want to contribute as a football club but are looking at Academies as well and we will be tying-up with an overseas club from Europe very soon to have one of the best Academies in India.


What have been the big positive and negative since your involvement in Indian football?

The biggest positive is that we have seen some development - better foreign players coming, big teams coming to our country. I have never seen these teams in India, they are coming and they also see India as a huge market. And with the volatile economy in the west I do see there is going to be a balancing act. It is now the right time for Indian football to get its act together and try to make it work.

As far as the negative is concerned I think is that we are unable to take advantage of this situation. There got to be some changes made and I do hope that Reliance (IMG-Reliance) take a look at it quickly and get the I-League in order and make the league interesting for the fans. It is a little frustrating as it is taking too much time, but somebody is losing money there...