Entrepreneurship is often framed around invention, disruption and the pursuit of scale. For Veer Sagar, Chairman, Selectronic and Promoter, Criconet who has spent decades building, turning around and reinventing businesses, its more enduring purpose is far more elemental, creating economic opportunity.
His entrepreneurial journey, from spotting the potential of India’s back-office economy to building Criconet as a technology-led cricket ecosystem, has been shaped by a recurring question, what is the unmet need, and can a business create livelihoods by solving it? “Even today, I have the same vision that I want to do something for job creation,” he says.
That conviction now sits at the heart of Criconet, where his ambition extends beyond producing better cricketers to creating a livelihood ecosystem for those who may never make it to India’s biggest sporting stages.
Decades before startups became a cultural shorthand for ambition, valuation and disruption, Sagar had identified what he believed was India’s most consequential problem, jobs.
Criconet: His New Innings
Today, that philosophy has found an unusual expression in cricket. Through Criconet, Sagar wants to build an ecosystem where cricket can become a livelihood for those who may never make it to the IPL or the national team. “My bigger vision is there are people all over India who will be making money by playing cricket. Not for the country. Not for this thing. Just like local games. It's like taking a job,” he says.
Criconet is being built as a digital cricket ecosystem that brings fans, players, coaches, scouts and cricket enthusiasts onto a single platform.
Its offering spans e-Pavilion for cricket conversations and community engagement, e-Coaching for learning and skill development, e-Streaming for live local matches and e-Academies for structured cricket training.
Founded by Veer Sagar out of his long-standing association with the sport, Criconet’s larger proposition is to connect the fragmented cricketing ecosystem digitally, while, as he emphasises, using that ecosystem to create visibility, opportunities and ultimately livelihoods for players beyond the conventional pathways of professional cricket.
Cricket Beyond The Big Stage
Criconet is being conceived as an ecosystem rather than merely a cricket platform. Its streams include live streaming, identifying promising players, coaching, visibility and, ultimately, jobs. Its E-Pavilion community already allows cricket enthusiasts to exchange views and engage around the game. But Sagar’s larger ambition lies beyond fandom.
“We're not talking about revenue. We're not talking about numbers. We're not talking about milestones,” he asserts. “We're talking about creating jobs.”
The proposition is deliberately democratic. “And it's meant for anybody. It's not meant for the rich,” he says, drawing from his own experience. As a college student, Sagar loved cricket but had to work. “I could not play cricket because I had to work. So I had no money. I had to work. So cricket, thank you very much. Nice knowing you. But that's it.”
Criconet, he says, is designed for the people who are talented enough to play but not necessarily talented enough to reach India or the IPL. “I'm looking for people who cannot find jobs. How can Criconet help them? But they must help themselves.”
Bringing Jobs To People
That conviction dates back to his first entrepreneurial journey. While working at DCM, he began asking a deceptively simple question: what was India’s biggest problem that could be fixed? His answer was employment.
The insight became the foundation for Selectronic, his medical-transcription back-office business. “If we can't send people to the job, let's get jobs to the people,” he recalls.
It was an early articulation of what would later become a defining Indian economic model, leveraging talent and technology to export services without exporting people. A doctor in the US needed transcription, a hospital saw the economic value; Sagar saw an opportunity to create employment in India.
But entrepreneurship arrived with a price. His idea was dismissed internally as creating “techno coolies”, and he lost his job. He had to choose between finding another position and building the business himself.
“I have never, see, I've been a risk taker in terms of jobs,” he says. “Here, there was money involved. If it failed, right, what happens to salaries?”
The Founder As His Own VC
Selectronic’s most severe test came two-and-a-half years in, when the very partner who had helped establish the business decided to go it alone. Sagar was left with roughly 120 employees, no jobs and mounting costs.
“I have nothing, but I will make it run,” he recalls deciding.
With VCs unwilling to fund a back-office business—“Back office? No, no, no, this doesn't make sense”—he became his own financier. He told his employees he had money for 45 days, but one promise remained firm: “I'm not going to close down.”
The business survived by becoming deliberately smaller and more focused. Rather than pursue large hospitals, Sagar chose the boutique route, working with smaller clinics. A doctor in Seattle became the first user, helping design a simple system that, Sagar notes, was still being used 28 years later.
The lesson was less about technology than resilience, capital discipline and customer-led execution. “It was not my great idea,” he says of the original business. “The doctor in the US said, I need this transcription. And the hospital said, yes, I can use this transcription. And if I use this service, I can save money.”
Conviction Over Hype
For Sagar, the enduring entrepreneurial quality is conviction—but conviction must be tethered to a real need.
“I don't need an earth-shattering idea. All you need is to find a need which is not being met,” he says.
His criticism of the contemporary startup ecosystem is pointed. Too often, entrepreneurship is equated with inventing something supposedly revolutionary, while the more prosaic discipline of product-market fit gets overlooked. “Meet the need, but don't do anything that has been done before,” he emphasises. “I don't want to be part of the herd.”
That philosophy also explains why revenue is not Criconet’s immediate organising principle. “I'm my own VC and my return is happiness,” he says. “I like teams to be happy.”
Beyond The Startup Buzz
His prescription for India’s next entrepreneurial chapter extends beyond startups. He believes the country needs substantially greater investment in education, research and innovation, rather than allowing fashionable themes to dictate capital allocation.
“Education and innovation is the lowest that we spend because without education, it's difficult to innovate,” he argues.
He is equally sceptical of the current AI frenzy when it becomes detached from economic or societal value. “In that fancy, the intention has been affected of adding value to people's lives,” he says, questioning whether India is building original intellectual property or simply becoming a supplier of the raw material for other countries’ AI ambitions.
His answer is to build on India’s comparative strengths, particularly design, technology and talent—and move progressively up the value chain.
That journey, perhaps, mirrors his own. From creating medical-transcription jobs when back-office was barely understood, to building a cricket ecosystem for those excluded from conventional sporting pathways, Sagar’s entrepreneurship remains rooted in a simple proposition, 'identify an unmet need, create something original around it, and make the enterprise useful to people.'
His first book, ‘Failure Is Not An Option’, chronicles his life and learnings. His forthcoming second book turns to the back-office story—how the model emerged, the struggles that shaped it and the making of an Indian industry.
In both, the underlying philosophy remains remarkably consistent, entrepreneurship is less about the glamour of the founder and more about the people whose lives the enterprise can change.