The sole purpose of this venture is to identify talent at the school level and bring them onboard to a future-ready platform comprising athletes, coaches and sporting services for schools and colleges across India

He had been there and witnessed the sorry state of affairs in India as a sportsman, but instead of cribbing and complaining, chose to make a difference at the ground level, literally.

Rishikesh Joshi isn’t just another next door startup guy with dreamy eyes popping out from inside a funky turtleneck. He has played six Olympic sports at the district, state and national levels, has an MBA in Sports Management and has worked with the stalwarts for 13 odd years before taking the plunge in muddied waters of Olympic sports in India.

Talent in India has never been in short supply, but the lack of opportunities, support and mentorship at the school and college level has left a wide vacuum. Most schools, often obsessed with grades in studies, tend to ignore sports as a mainstream curriculum, and above all, the perception of parents, which finds resonance in a Hindi adage, “Kheloge kudoge to honge kharab, padhoge likhoge to banoge nawab” (your life will be a waste if you play, but if you do well in studies, you will rule).

While India idolises the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Saina Nehwal, Sushil Kumar, Abhinav Bindra, and PV Sindhu, many aspiring athletes lose their way and disappear without leaving a trail. Rishikesh wants to change that – one city at a time – through his maiden venture – Sports For All (SFA) – the world’s first fully integrated “click & mortar” system built for Olympics sports at the grassroots level in India. SFA aims to create a sustainable ecosystem that’s competitive, dynamic, fair, and growth oriented for all sporting talents in India.

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Bootstrapped with an investment of about US$1.5 million in 2015-16, the sole purpose of this venture is to identify talent at the school level and bring them onboard to a future-ready platform comprising athletes, coaches and sporting services for schools and colleges across India. Last year, over 35,000 students from 700 schools in Mumbai alone took advantage of the platform for three weeks and experienced the facilities usually available to international athletes across 25 sporting disciplines.

“We have also involved professional sports operators, tied up with associations and federations, close to 1,300+ technical officials were involved during last year’s SFA week. Every single match was professionally video recorded. Today, we have 11,000 match recordings for 2016 alone, with detailed statistics and records of every athlete linked to their individual profile on www.sfanow.in,” Rishikesh adds.

SFA targets to reach out to 50,000 kids from 850 schools in Mumbai in 2017, and plans to expand its platform to the colleges in Mumbai.

It wasn’t a smooth ride, though, at the beginning. While the schools realised the platform’s potential, their response wasn’t quite encouraging. However, things started to change dramatically when they witnessed first-hand an annual multi-sporting Olympic-style event with world class infrastructure, structured draws and match fixtures, officiated by government-authorised bodies, with a school ranking system and performance analysis of the individual athletes. Now, schools, too, had a formal platform to outrank another in sports.

SFA has put in place a concrete plan to expand into eight cities and integrate over 1 million aspiring athletes across 35 sporting disciplines on a single platform by 2021. “Well, our platform is completely ready (digitally and on-ground) to be scaled beyond Mumbai, awaiting sponsor approval to take the initiative nationwide. We have invested a lot of money and we are now looking at raising funds to propel the platform to a higher growth trajectory,” says Rishikesh.

This is the start of a multi-sporting wave in our country. The start of a winning culture. The Start of empowering the future champions of India. Ab jeetega India!

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