All India Football Federation's ambitious plan to rope in at least two corporate-owned sides into the I-League today received good initial response with 30 companies, including IPL teams owners Sahara Group and GMR, turning up in a meeting with the AIFF officials here.
The open house meeting at the AIFF Headquarters was chaired by federation president Praful Patel, who later expressed happiness at the initial response of the corporate houses at the initiative.
"It was a very satisfying meeting and the response from the corporate sector was very good. We are hopeful that we could find at least two corporate teams to play in the next I-League season (2013-14)," he said after the meeting which lasted more than two hours.
Besides Sahara Group and GMR, who own IPL teams Pune Warriors and Delhi Daredevils respectively, the other corporates include Pune-based Venky's, the owners of former English Premier League side Blackburn Rovers, and Dubai-based Dodsal Group and DSK Shivajians from Pune.
This is, however, early times now as many of the corporate houses that turned up today were yet to commit anything on whether they are interested in the AIFF initiative.
The Corporate Communications head of Sahara Group, Abhijit Sarkar told PTI that his company would want to see what is there in the Request for Proposal (RPF) from the AIFF which will be floated on March 30.
