Apollo Tyres, on Monday, refused to share the information sought by the All India Tennis Association regarding their Mission 2018 project, saying they were under no obligation to do so.
AITA had shot a letter to the tyre giants early this month, requesting them to produce an audited statement of their spendings in the first year towards the project as they felt Apollo were making big claims through their advertisement campaign but actually had not done that much.
"As a corporate, we are answerable to our shareholders, the Board and the children (who are training with them). We are not bound to give the spending details of our project to anyone," Avik Chattopadhyay, Apollo Tyres spokesperson, said.
On being asked if they had spent 10 crore rupees in the first year as per the plan, Chattopadhyay said "We have committed 100 crore rupees for the project but that does not mean 10 crores has to be spend necessarily every year."
The Apollo spokesperson asserted that their advertisement campaign was not meant to demean anyone.
"We are not saying that we are the only one promoting tennis. We never though of demeaning anyone. We have a clear objective that we want to get a Grand Slam Champion by 2018 if not before. And we need to communicate on that," he said.
Chattopadhyay also claimed that AITA had a clear idea of their initiative.
"We have kept AITA in loop. One of the Challenges was held at DLTA only. How can they say that they do not know about our programme," he said adding that "Apollo already had many meetings with AITA."
