From a small city club run by a fan in Vadodara to standing tall for India at an international soccer festival in Australia this week, it would seem that Providence FC simply has that name, and sheer grit, to thank for.

But actually, it’s a success story that has been built on a neighbourhood store, and an astute, “self-sufficient” business model designed by an IIM-Lucknow graduate — one that saw the club build up its ‘playing capital’ to grow from a domestic oddity to enter the Kanga Cup in Canberra on an Asian fellowship.

For one, it’s the only store to openly display, along with the purchase price of products, the profit margin that it hopes to gain from the sale of each item — rice, dal, tomato ketchup, detergent powder, and everything else in between.

And then, it has its “loyal” customers actually pooling in to make that margin better.

“We need money but to promote the game and not merely for profits” says C Sadanandan, the administrator, a retired IPCL employee, who started the club in a state not really famous for its football, initially with recruits from his home state Kerala.

Well, the IIM graduate who has fashioned this business model is Sadanandan’s son Satyajit. And, the customers who are part of this four-year-old “movement” are Vadodara residents like Girish Pandya, a retired pharma firm employee, who proposed a customer membership scheme, and G P Namdeo, former V-P (business operations), Nicholas Piramal, who simply offered his services.

... contd.