Few people get to meet their gods. Fewer still get to work with them. And then there is Satadru Dutta, 43, who has not only done both but also got his gods to meet one another. “I was quite nervous the day Diego Maradona was supposed to meet Sourav Ganguly (in 2017). Because you could never quite predict what mood Maradona was going to be in. Thankfully, he was rather joyous that day, he loved meeting Dada and hugged him repeatedly! I was so relieved,” recollects Dutta, a sports promoter and business consultant whose brainchild, A Satadru Dutta Initiative, has brought the likes of Maradona, Pele, Cafu and many more to Kolkata and intends to bring Emiliano Martinez, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo to the city soon.
Born and brought up in Hooghly’s Rishra, a small town known for producing footballing gems such as Sudhir Karmakar and Sisir Ghosh, Dutta always had an inclination towards entrepreneurship. Or more specifically towards “something big that not only brings money, but also happiness and pride”. Having started off his career in finance, Dutta was leading a comfortable life in wealth management and investment banking with IL&FS and then with HSBC when he decided to make the switch in 2011 to start something new. “Sports has always been a big part of my identity and I wanted to be a part of international events, to do something out of the box,” says Dutta, whose bullish optimism mixes with his polite voice to create a rare register every time he speaks.
Telling Pele what he should have done to beat Gordon Banks
Pele was one of the most humble people Dutta has ever met Satadru Dutta
After A Satadru Dutta Initiative was born, Dutta’s first major assignment was to bring a group of football icons to Kolkata — Bebeto, Dunga, Juninho and Rene Higuita. Once that went off smoothly, Dutta set his eyes on perhaps the biggest name of them all. Growing up, Dutta and his friends would often talk about Gordon Banks’s ‘save of the century’ to deny Pele at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. “Pele should’ve wrong footed Banks. He was sure to score then,” would be Dutta’s expert take. Unsurprisingly, his friends would tease him by asking, “Why don’t you go tell Pele yourself?” And so he did.
In 2015, Dutta found himself one-on-one with Pele, tasked with persuading one of the game’s greatest to visit Kolkata for the first time since 1977. “I told him that the current generation of Kolkata’s football lovers hadn’t seen him in person, that they needed to experience his magic live. He agreed,” describes Dutta. And what happened when Dutta told Pele about what the latter should have done to get the better of Banks four-and-a-half decades back? “He just smiled graciously. Pele was one of the most humble people I’ve ever met. He also had an extremely professional team, which made everything much easier for me,” responds Dutta.
Managing Maradona by replacing the fan with the professional
Maradona with Dutta’s son, who is called Diego in the Argentine’s honour Satadru Dutta
Two years later, things would not be so easy with the one man who has claimed to be better than Pele more often than he can remember. Diego Armando Maradona. “My father and I were in tears when Maradona and Argentina lost the 1990 World Cup final [to West Germany]. He was an idol of mine, someone I considered to be a god,” says Dutta. After months of prolonged conversations that took Dutta halfway across the world and back, Maradona finally agreed to visit Kolkata in late 2017. Once the agreement was official, Dutta was so elated that he named his newly born son Diego. And then, the real Diego arrived. And so did the drama.
“You didn’t know what you were going to get with Maradona. With Pele, his team controlled everything. But nobody controlled Maradona, he did what he pleased,” says Dutta, who quickly realised that he could not be a wide-eyed fan if he had to do business with the 1986 World Cup winner. “We were on our way to an event in Barasat and I had told him that it’d take us 20 minutes to reach. However, it ended up taking us about 35 minutes. That’s when Maradona started losing it, throwing tantrums in the car. And yet, that same man who was screaming and scratching his seat, completely transformed within moments when he reached the appointed spot and saw a bunch of kids waiting for him. He was supposed to play with them for 20 minutes. He stayed with them for 90. This was followed by the much-anticipated meeting with Dada and an exhibition match between the two,” narrates Dutta.
Dealing with Maradona’s mood swings made Dutta learn on the go. When the Argentine maestro entered another event and was dissuaded from leaving his room by the sheer size of the crowd, Dutta did what few defenders have ever managed to do. He stood up to Maradona. “I went up to him and told him that he had to respect his deliverables. That he had signed a contract which he had to follow. It was time to be a firm professional and that’s what I did,” says Dutta, who could not even curse Maradona in his mind for his antics because “my son has the same name!”.
When Cafu visited Kolkata last November, with Dutta once again at the helm, things hardly veered off script. “Cafu was really easy to deal with. There were no issues. He isn’t Maradona, for better or worse!” chuckles Dutta, who had also brought Carlos Valderrama to Kolkata in late 2017 and was in charge of Neeraj Chopra’s visit to the city in 2021, shortly after Chopra had won Olympic gold. “Soon enough, I’ll try to get Messi. And after that, I’ll try for Ronaldo,” adds Dutta with a sense of understatement that only immense confidence can bring.
‘When I’m around Dada, I’m constantly inspired’
Dutta looks up to Ganguly not just as a business associate, but also as an elder brother Satadru Dutta
Dutta oozes confidence and admits as much: “Confidence is my calling card. No matter who I’m in a room with, I’ll have my wits about myself.” Has there ever been a time when he was starstruck and lost for words? “Yes, for about 10 to 15 minutes, when I was sitting in front of Dada for the first time,” says Dutta with a slight blush. Ever since his teenage years, Dutta has looked up to Ganguly, with the southpaw’s memorable century on Test debut at Lord’s being “something that I can never forget”.
“I’m going to do something big with you” was what Dutta had told the former Indian captain at their first proper meeting. Over the years, Dutta has kept his word, time and again. From arranging the book launch of Ganguly’s memoir, A Century Is Not Enough, at Lord’s and Oxford in 2018 in the presence of Mike Gatting, Kumara Sangakkara, Allan Border, Michael Atherton, among others to recreating the Lord’s pavilion at Garia’s Mitali Sangha community Durga Puja in 2022 as an extended celebration of Ganguly’s 50th birthday, Dutta has grown to become more of a younger brother than a business associate for Ganguly.
“When I’m around Dada, I’m constantly inspired. He’s a tremendous motivator and he looks after you. I can’t deny that knowing him and being among his trusted circle has helped me a lot,” says Dutta, whose own philosophy is to keep looking out for his friends. “My networks may be big, but my world is small. Within that world, the people I care about mean everything to me,” says Dutta, whose impresario-esque style can often create detractors. Not that Dutta bothers: “I’ve kept hearing how I can’t do this and I can’t do that. That I’m simply firing blanks with my words. I’ve learnt to ignore all that. People will say what they have to. For me, my formula is clear. I have to balance risk and reward, more so now that I have my wife and son. What helps me strike this balance is the constant support of my family, especially my brother-in-law, Asesh Dutta.”
Dutta’s next target for Kolkata is Argentina’s Emi Martinez
Emiliano Martinez, the winner of the Golden Glove at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, is set to visit Kolkata this summer, thanks to Dutta TT archives
Apart from inviting the who’s who to the City of Joy, Dutta is also involved in catering to the needs of those who are frequently forgotten. Dutta’s charity, Sisir Foundation (named after his father), contributes towards social work from every large-scale celebrity project that Dutta manages. During the second wave of Covid-19, the Foundation (with support from the JSW Group, Ganugly and UK-based entrepreneur Manik Dey, among others) distributed oxygen cylinders and oxygen concentrators and helped carry out vaccination campaigns. For the man who has hobnobbed with some of the best-known people on the planet, Dutta’s proudest day was when his charity was able to serve biryani to sex workers in Sonagachi. “The way in which they were living shocked us. We knew we had to do something, and ironically, it was on my father’s birthday that the food drive was carried out,” says Dutta.
After more than a decade of endless flying, networking and micromanaging, Dutta has not lost any of his energy. Or his love for sports. Football remains first, with Dutta building a state-of-the-art football facility on the rooftop of his house in Rishra for his five-year-old son. But Dutta also loves his cricket, tennis and basketball, even WWE. At some point, he is going to try to get Michael Jordan to Kolkata as well as another of his childhood idols, Steffi Graf. The next big target, though, is Emiliano Martinez. Pencilled in for sometime this summer. But why would an active footballer playing in England want to come to Kolkata for a personal visit? That, too, during his off-season? Perhaps because Satadru Dutta is arranging it. “It’s a complicated process, but I’m trying my best,” says Dutta. Knowing his track record, you would not want to bet against him.
