ISL: Former Kerala Blasters CEO to co-own new Hyderabad franchise

The sixth season of the Indian Super League is set to witness a franchise overhaul with a new team from Hyderabad replacing FC Pune City. The new Hyderabad team will be co-helmed by Telangana businessman Vijay Madduri alongside former Kerala Blasters CEO Varun Tripuraneni, after Pune City FC announced their decision of shutting down operations.

Owned by the Wadhawan group, the Stallions has been riddled with financial issues and is compelled to shift their first-team operations to a new city. As a result, their right to participation in the ISL is set to be transferred to the new team from Hyderabad. The Hyderabad team is likely to play their home games from Gachibowli stadium, though a final decision is yet to be taken.

As a new entity, the Hyderabad-based club is also set to escape the transfer ban that was handed out to FC Pune City. They were found guilty of tapping up Chennai City midfielder Nestor Gordillo and were handed a two-window transfer ban starting from January 2020. The ban would have applied to the new team from Hyderabad as well if they had taken over FC Pune City officially.

About the owners

Varun Tripuraneni has been associated with the ISL before and is no stranger to the marquee league. In his previous stint, Varun donned the role of CEO for Kerala Blasters after he had served as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Chennaiyin FC during the initial years of the ISL.

On the other hand, Vijay Madduri is an alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin where he completed his MBA, Madduri has been serving as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Hyderabad-based digital integration service provider Incessant Technologies for nearly a decade.

The former software engineer has previously served as the director of sales and client services for Virtusa India Pvt Ltd while he has also undertaken a one-year executive leadership program from the prestigious Yale School of Management in 2015.