‘Aishwarya and I started dating in Jaipur’: Abhishek Bachchan reveals his wife, daughter Aaradhya and father Amitabh Bachchan’s emotional connection for him choosing Jaipur Pink Panthers | Hindi Movie News

Abhishek Bachchan Unveils Heartfelt Connections Behind Jaipur Pink Panthers’ Genesis

Mumbai, India – Bollywood actor and entrepreneur Abhishek Bachchan has shed light on the deeply personal and emotional motivations behind his decision to invest in the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) team, the Jaipur Pink Panthers, revealing connections to his family, career milestones, and even his wife, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

In a recent candid interview with PWC India chairperson Sanjeev Krishnan, Bachchan detailed the surprisingly sentimental journey that led him to choose Jaipur as the team’s home city and "Pink Panthers" as its distinctive name. This decision, made in 2014 when kabaddi was far from being a mainstream sport in cricket-obsessed India, was rooted in a profound love for sports, a passion he attributes to his legendary father, Amitabh Bachchan, himself a fervent sports enthusiast.

"I picked up the Jaipur team," Bachchan explained, "Jaipur is where I shot a part of my first film. It was an auspicious thing to start something new." But the city holds an even deeper significance for the actor: "It was also a city where Aishwarya and I started dating, it has an emotional part."

The team’s distinctive "Pink" color also has a charming family anecdote behind it. "Pink because it was my daughter’s favourite colour at that point of time," Bachchan shared. The "Pink Panther" moniker, however, weaves in another layer of familial and cinematic nostalgia. "Pink Panther’ was a film which Aishwarya made," he noted, referring to her role in the 2009 film The Pink Panther 2. Adding a personal touch, he recalled a playful exchange with his father: "As a kid my father used to call me Tiger and one day I told him, ‘How are you Panther?’ So, it was a joke between him and me and it is how Jaipur Pink Panthers happened."

Bachchan’s commitment to the team went beyond mere ownership. He revealed his hands-on approach in the initial days, stating, "Two weeks before the first match happened and I used to sit with the boys, train with them, know what they are eating. I was micromanaging like, ‘why are you giving them aloo parathas, they are athletes but that’s what they wanted to eat.’"

Recounting the inaugural PKL match, which pitted the Jaipur Pink Panthers against Ronnie Screwvala’s UMumba, Bachchan shared a memorable anecdote about the overwhelming star power present. Despite being the underdogs, the Bachchan-owned team found themselves distracted by the sheer number of Bollywood and cricketing legends in the audience. "We got thrashed," he admitted, "and I remember I went to the team and asked them, ‘Boys, what happened? We were ready!’ and their answer was so cute. They said, ‘Bhaiyya hua kya ke hum log khel rahe the toh dekhe ke Amitabh Bachchan ji khade hai. Hum log kabhi dekhe nai the unko. Unke bagal mein Sachin Tendulkar ji the. Phir unke peechhe Shah Rukh Khan aur phir Bhabhi ji bhi wahan baithi thi. So, I said ‘Oh God’."

He further elaborated on how the presence of his father, along with Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan, all sporting Jaipur Pink Panthers jerseys, inadvertently propelled kabaddi into the national conversation. "The first page of the newspaper had a photograph of my father, Shah Rukh and Aamir who had very sweetly come to see the match and they were all wearing Jaipur Pink Panther jerseys and suddenly the conversation is like, ‘hey what’s kabaddi’. And then it just took off," the Guru actor recalled, acknowledging the pivotal role of these celebrity endorsements in elevating the sport’s profile.

Beyond kabaddi, Abhishek Bachchan’s entrepreneurial spirit in sports extends to owning a football team, Chennaiyin FC, in the Indian Super League. He is also a co-founder of the European T20 Premier League (ETPL). On the acting front, Bachchan is slated to appear next in the film ‘King’.