The RP-Sanjiv Goenka group picked Lucknow as their home base with a winning bid of INR 7090 crore.
During the IPL team auction in Dubai on Monday (October 25), the RP-Sanjiv Goenka group and international equity investment firm CVC Capital won the bid.
The highest was the Goenka group for both Lucknow and Ahmedabad and they preferred the former to base their team in. CVC Capital was the second highest and they got Ahmedabad for 5,625 crores
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"We do believe that the valuations of this will go up in the future. And from what we invest, to what it could be over a period of 10 years would be a multiple of a few times," Goenka, chairman of RPSG Group, said.
"Frankly it's something that I've been keen on for a while. When the opportunity presented itself we took it. IPL has created some of the biggest brands. Look at Mumbai Indians, Delhi Capitals, Chennai Super Kings and look at some of the others, they are really household names, some of the biggest brands the country has."
On preferring the Lucknow franchise, he said: "For us, Uttar Pradesh has been an important state. We distribute power in Greater Noida. We have a number of Spencer stores in the state. So we do believe that will help us to connect with the state, and we look forward to this."
Goenka, who was the owner of now-dysfunctional Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) in 2016 and 2017 when Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings were barred, was delighted to be a part of the IPL once again.
"Firstly, it feels good to be back in the IPL. But this is just the first step. Now, it's really for us to build a good team, and try to put up a good performance."
"So the work really begins now in terms of actually getting the coach, putting together a team, and getting a sense of discipline and performance into play."
Sanjiv Goenka concluded by saying that they're yet to decide on the team’s name while the team combination and marquee players would depend on the availability.
"If wishes are horses... We don't know yet. It would depend on retention policy and who are the available players, then only we can decide on our key players," he signed off.
(With PTI inputs)