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RuPay becomes title sponsor for Pro Volleyball League
MUMBAI: RuPay, the flagship product of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), acquired the title sponsorship rights of India’s newest franchise-based sports league, the Pro Volleyball League, which is set to start on 2 February.
Conceived to fulfil the vision of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) of offering a domestic card payment system to all banks and financial institutions in India, RuPay will be the league’s title sponsor that takes off with six franchises from six different cities.
An initiative of Baseline Ventures and Volleyball Federation of India, the league will now be called the RuPay Pro Volleyball League in its first season. Expressing his delight on this association, RuPay SVP – marketing Kunal Kalawatia said, “RuPay is the preferred card for 60 crore Indians and 1100+ banks issue a RuPay Card today. Like RuPay powering the digital payments initiative, we believe that Pro Volleyball league will bring this sport to the forefront and connect the nation with a common spirit. With RuPay Pro Volley Ball League we want to celebrate the power of a young & healthy India.”
The inaugural edition of the league will begin with Kochi Blue Spikers taking on U Mumba Volley on 2 February at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Kochi. The six teams that were announced in November 2018 will play each other in a round robin format in the first season that will have 18 matches.
Talking about the development, Baseline Ventures co-founder and MD Tuhin Mishra said, “We are delighted to have RuPay come on board as the title sponsor of the league. It is great to see that RuPay has invested in a sport that is fast-paced, exciting and perfectly matched for our young and dynamic nation. The Pro Volleyball League aims to start a volleyball revolution to match the digital India revolution that RuPay is leading. And to help us in this endeavour, we couldn’t have found better partners than RuPay.”
Welcoming RuPay on board, former India international player and Volleyball Federation of India current Secretary General Ramavtar Singh Jakhar said, “We wholeheartedly welcome RuPay on board of PVL. It’s heartening to see such a prestigious brand which is also the pride of our Nation to support a truly grassroot mass sport such as Volleyball. We are sure it will be a great association.”
Ahmedabad Defenders is owned by Bonhomie Sports Event Mgmt. Ltd., Kerala's Calicut Heroes is owned by Beacon Sports while the Chennai Spartans is owned by Chennai Spartans Pvt. Ltd. U Mumba Volley is owned by U Sports, who also own a team in the Kabaddi league while Black Hawks Hyderabad is owned by Agile Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. Thomas Muthoot owns the Kochi franchise called the Kochi Blue Spikers.
All the matches starting from 2 February will be broadcasted live on Sony Six and Sony Ten 3 and will be streamed live on Sony LIV.
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YES Bank appoints S Anantharaman as chief risk officer
Former Jio Financial Services group chief risk officer takes charge of enterprise-wide risk at the embattled private lender
MUMBAI: YES Bank is not taking chances with risk anymore. The private lender has appointed S Anantharaman as its chief risk officer, a hire that signals the bank’s continued effort to rebuild credibility and tighten the controls that once famously slipped.
Anantharaman arrives from Jio Financial Services, where he served as group chief risk officer and built a risk management architecture spanning lending, payments, insurance broking and asset management from the ground up. Before that, he held the chief risk officer role at Bank of Baroda and senior leadership positions at HDFC Bank and L&T Finance Holdings. Three decades in banking and financial services, in other words, with scars and qualifications to match. He is a chartered accountant and a CFA charterholder.
At YES Bank, his brief is considerable. Anantharaman will oversee the bank’s entire enterprise-wide risk framework, covering credit policy, market risk, operational risk, information security, data governance, analytics, model governance and data privacy. It is, in short, every lever that matters when a bank is trying to prove it has grown up.
YES Bank’s turbulent past needs little rehearsing. What it needs now is exactly what Anantharaman has spent thirty years building: the kind of risk culture that stops problems before they become headlines. The appointment suggests the bank knows it.
