Attitudes toward sports need to change if India is to produce the next big athlete, believes Freshworks co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Girish Mathrubootham.

Speaking at TEDxChennai on Sunday, the man behind India’s latest unicorn venture made an impassioned appeal to parents and academicians to help develop a robust sporting culture across the country.

"Sachin Tendulkar was successful in India despite the system," said Girish, in his TEDx Talk, “But the system is designed for the Sundar Pitchais of the world.”

His pitch for better sporting culture comes less than a year since the Freshworks CEO invested and helped establish in a football club for children, FC Madras.

Speaking exclusively to CNBC-TV18 about the venture, Girish said the plan was to train children in the Under-13 and Under-15 category to play competitive football.

"In India, there’s no money even in professional football. In grass-root training, there are no sponsorships," he said, "What pains me is that in India, we are a country of football fans. But the question we must ask ourselves is do we remain fans or can we have Indians playing at Chelsea and Manchester United? That is the dream."

Girish’s FC Madras has been designed along the long-term goal of sending an Indian player to an international football club. "We want to find the next Messi from Madras,” he quips, describing the dream.

FC Madras has 40 children under its wings today and has built a 100x65-metre football field made of artificial turf, in Chennai. Girish’s venture sees coaches, scouts and trainers look for young talent, train them, pay attention to nutritional needs, and supplement “high-performance training”, with academics.

The venture comes alongside similar investments for Girish, in the start-up space. A month ago, travel start-up PickYourTrail announced that he and three other CEOs had jointly funded a total of $3 million towards the start-up’s Series-A funding.

But football, Girish believes, will take time before results are achieved. "We’re approaching this as a long-gestation project,” said Girish, “You can’t produce world champions overnight. We believe that it could take six to eight years before you see progress on the international platform."