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Mysuru-headquartered Cycle Pure Incense was named the official team sponsor of the Sri Lankan Women’s Cricket Team for the ongoing T20 World Cup.
The deal, facilitated by ITW Consulting, will see the flagship brand of the N Ranga Rao & Sons Group prominently featured on the right sleeve of the women’s team jersey.
Business of Sports was remotely-present at the press conference held in Colombo on February 1, and we got a chance to understand the ethos behind the association from Mr. Arjun Ranga (Managing Director of Cycle Pure Incense) and Mr. Subramaniam Easuwaran (Cycle’s Sri Lanka Team Head).
Why would an Indian agarbatti company sponsor a women’s cricket team in Sri Lanka?
Turns out the partnership is more organic than it would initially seem.
Sri Lanka’s 1 billion rupees per month incense market
Terming the market for incense sticks in Sri Lanka as “quite sizeable,” Mr Easuwaran noted:
“Sri Lanka is a very spiritual country. We believe in prayer, we believe in hope…if you want to put a figure to it, we think it’s roughly about a billion rupees a month.”
Elaborating further, Mr. Easuwaran revealed that the Indian brand entered Sri Lanka eight years ago to provide a livelihood to war widows “both in the north and the south.”
In addition to this strong gender synergy, with most of its employees being women, Mr. Easuwaran feels that their product “signifies hope,” which is perfectly exemplified by the Sri Lankan women’s cricket team.
Underlining Cycle’s enabling role towards the Sri Lankan women’s cricket team, Mr. Easuwaran said:
“They’ve [Sri Lankan’s Women’s Cricket Team] had to cross through many boundaries [and] jump over through many hoops in order to get where they are...I believe that the entire nation is behind them and we are very proud to be part of this support.”
Cycle’s apt third-umpire branding
From a broader perspective, Cycle has supported cricket since 2005, kicking things off with its memorable third-umpire branding.
Mr. Ranga broke down the third-umpire branding as follows:
“Our tagline is ‘everyone has a reason to pray’, and when the third umpire comes on, we have our brand that goes around saying ‘everyone has a reason to pray’…both the batting team, the bowling team, as well as the spectators, are all praying one way or the other, and that’s how the brand’s association started with cricket.”
As it turns out, Mr. Ranga is a “sportsman at heart” who still actively plays cricket for his corporate team. Cycle, in fact, also owns a team in the Karnataka Premier League.
Highlighting the need for both sports and non-sports sponsorships, Mr. Ranga concluded by saying:
“Now we have Mr. Amitabh Bachchan as our brand ambassador on one side, [and] we have sporting greats like Sourav Ganguly as the other brand ambassador. I believe in what sports does to people…how it builds character. As an organization, too, a lot of my employees are ex-cricketers and sportsmen also. So, for me, cricket and sport sponsorship is a personal passion...and for the brand, for mass connect, we always use celebrities [like Amitabh Bachchan and Sourav Ganguly]… So for me, there is no 'this' or 'that'.”
Clearly, with Cycle’s numero uno status in the agarbatti market – assiduously built over three generations – they can afford to do both.
You can watch our media interaction here:
