How Dhoni and Rhiti Sports changed advertising in India
Dhoni is India's most marketable man, and that is largely thanks to his association with Rhiti Sports Management. Suveen K. Sinha examines their close relationship, and how integral Dhoni's brand has been
31-Mar-2013
When Dhoni signed with Rhiti Sports Management Pvt. in 2010 for 210 crores over three years, he officially became the most marketable cricket player, overtaking Sachin Tendulkar in the process. Suveen K Sinha of Business Today uncovers the path it took for Rhiti to get to the forefront of advertising in India, the story of its owner Arun Pandey, and how influential Dhoni has been in the process.
The first agreement of Arun Pandey's life was signed with his mother. Before he came to live in Delhi in 1994, she made him put his signature on a piece of paper listing the things he would do, the things he would not, the time at which he would step out of the Lodhi Colony flat he had rented, the time he would be back, the people he would meet, and the kind he would not. Pandey's father died when he was a little boy and the mother, a State Bank of India employee in Varanasi, was worried that her son might go astray in the city of hard drugs and easy girls.