Jalandhar footballs for World Cup

Punjab entrepreneurs seem to have made up for India not doing well in soccer. After Ludhiana-based Satgur Impex having manufactured and delivered 110,000 Italian soccer training vests and 22,000 national flags of Italy for the World Cup, 2006, to be held in Germany in June, footballs manufactured in Jalandhar will now be sent for the prestigious event. Jalandhar's Sakay Traders is supplying footballs for the World Cup.

Ashok Katyal, owner of Sakay Traders, said the agreement was signed between his firm and Fifa last year. He added that his firm was the first in the country to obtain an order directly from Fifa, while other manufacturers were supplying promotional balls only.

This is the first time that Fifa has authorised an Indian manufacturer to use its logo on the footballs to be supplied, according to Katyal, who added that all the footballs would be made by hand.

"My unit is producing 22,000-25,000 footballs every day and has manufactured about 5 million balls since June last year," he said.

Sakay Traders had obtained the order to supply balls, including promotional balls, worth Rs 50 crore, of which balls worth Rs 50 lakh have been sent to European and South American countries.

There were so many orders for footballs that it was very difficult to meet the production requirements, though the firm has employed about 6,000 workers, said Katyal.

Katyal, a recipient of the National Export Award for sports goods, said his company's emphasis on quality, low production cost and timely delivery won him the order.