My Story

Intro

After the 2007 cricket world cup, when India was knocked out of the 1st round and previous failures in Olympics, we did some soul searching as to why a nation with a billion people could produce so few champions in sports and the result is our venture IndiaKhelo with an objective of improving the sports culture in India, empower talent at the grassroots and also to create awareness, awaken rural India using sports as a medium.

IndiaKhelo’s team includes all ex-IIT’ians who have recently graduated or left high-paying jobs in the US and we are extremely inspired to see our ideas to fruition.

About Akhil

I am originally from the city of Nawabs, Hyderabad in South India and completed my Bachelors of Technology in Chemical Engineering at IIT Bombay and then worked with ITC as an assistant manager couple of years (2007 – 09). I am a huge sports enthusiast, captained my institute Aquatics team and also played football & basketball. Apart from playing I am also interested in Sports trivia and have contested and won a few Sports quizzes as well. Other passions include long distance running & adventure sports; I have also taken professional courses in Paragliding and Wind Sailing. My interest in Sports and the motivation to contribute to its development in India were the main motivation factors to get me involved with IndiaKhelo. To be honest many people have asked me “Is’nt this a big risk your taking” and so on, my reply to them so far has been “I know it is a huge risk to do this, but the risk of sticking to the tried and tested route in life without exploring your dreams far outweighs the risk of going ahead with this venture far”.

About Varun

I am a final year undergraduate student at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. I have only one passion in life and that is indubitably sports, which goes hand in hand with my purpose of bringing social development by enthuse and stimulating youth. I have been a sportsman throughout my life and practice adventure and sportsmanship on and off the field. Entrepreneurship in my perception is a cradle of one’s dreams and his attitude, sports taught me to be a leader, manage my team effectively and live life king size so it never took me much time to decide my career path

Our Venture

IndiaKhelo (my venture) is a lifestyle. We are focused on developing sports culture in India and strengthen sports talent at the grassroots. Sports in India have been neglected from long and as it don’t offer a systematic and secure future. If nothing’s done now, I will be talking to my future generations telling them how much I loved sports and how lack of resources made me choose another career. Instead I thought why not to take an initiative and try changing the scenario so that people like can streamline their passion and career. We aim to to improve the sports culture in India by igniting local healthy competition amongst grassroots players, institutes and create awareness among people in rural/urban areas especially youth via sports.

All of us have been passionate about sports from our childhood and were active sportsman and the end goal for all of us was same – to make sure that sports is not anymore a down looked activity in India, to give meaning to dream of that young Indian who wants to be like Sachin or Narain Karthikeyan!

To make our vision reality IndiaKhelo identifies sporting talent in schools, colleges, sporting academies in the urban and rural parts of India by conducting Sports & Fitness Contests to provide India’s first National Amateur Ranking System. Along with the support of external sources we would provide scholarships and advanced training to these talented sportsmen and then perform India’s first televised amateur Sports tournament – “Indian Regional League”.

IndiaKhelo is working both in the urban sector with schools and associations and also in the rural parts with the support of the Government of India for the empowerment of the rural youth using sports as a medium. Our long-term plan is to provide a One stop database of all the amateur players in the country along with their verified match data so that we build a transparent manner for selecting and training the best athletes from across the nation. We plan to open sports academies in the future to train and nurture the best athletes who would bring laurels to our nation.

It’s time for new light to dawn on Indian Sports. Entrepreneurs only have the capability of breathing some air into the dead soul of Indian Sports Industry and make it alive. It’s time for new blood to run, we don’t need orthodox and age old ways anymore, we need modern mentality, people with courage to take a daring decision and stand up to it till he collapses. What we need is a drastic change and no one can bring it except entrepreneurs!