Billion Plus Sports Incubator launched

GoSports Foundation (GSF) and Sports and Society Accelerator (SSA) have partnered to establish and launch the Billion Plus Sports Incubator (Incubator) for social enterprise in sport to promote universality, inclusion and impact in and through sport and physical activity (SAPA) in India. The Incubator is a joint project intended to promote deserving talent, build capacity, and enable the community to harness the related economic, social and other gains, while enhancing and consolidating funding to the sport for development sector. The impetus for this Incubator is the widespread consensus on the importance SAPA as a national imperative, and its far-reaching benefits on physical and mental health, social impact indices, and contribution to economic growth.

The Incubator will work with a diverse range of partners to roll out impactful and scalable programs in sport for development, as well as incubate the next generation of social enterprises using the power of sport to benefit all of society. Its key focus will be supporting high-potential social enterprises that use the power of SAPA to impact communities and groups that have been historically underrepresented and marginalized.

The Incubator will aim to promote deserving talent, build capacity and raise the levels of SAPA within a community to enable its people to harness the related economic, social and other gains. The Incubator will also identify and help bridge existing demographic or geographic gaps, to ensure that India optimizes and democratizes the role of SAPA for society, and for the economy.

The Incubator will make bespoke interventions that may be financial or non-financial in nature, including grants and support for technology, projects, athlete scholarships, programs, capacity building, monitoring and evaluation and other aspects of organizational development and growth.

About the initiative, Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO, GoSports Foundation said, ‘this is an opportune time for us at the GoSports Foundation to establish this Incubator with SSA, leveraging our expertise in building foundational systems in sports excellence and talent discovery with our proven successes in both. India is ready for expanding the benefit of sport to every participant and we are excited to launch this Incubator against the backdrop of the upcoming Paris Olympics and Paralympics’

Abishek Laxminarayan, Trustee, GoSports Foundation opined, ‘the combination of GoSports Foundation, with its pioneering work around sports excellence, with SSA’s custodianship role in the SAPA ecosystem makes this a timely and future-forward intervention that will galvanize support for the sector through CSR and philanthropic funding, thereby optimizing the benefit of sport for a large section of Indian society.’

Desh Gaurav Sekhri, Co-Founder, Sports and Society Accelerator, added, ‘there has been an undeniable recognition of the emerging role of SAPA as a national imperative, leading into India’s bid to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2036. This sector has the potential to be the eventual nerve center for livelihoods and social transformation in India, and for India to be the lighthouse nation for the rest of the world. The Incubator is poised to make a difference that will help us achieve Mission 100, i.e., universal SAPA in India by 2047, with every child playing a sport, and every Indian active.’

About the Sports and Society Accelerator

The Sports and Society Accelerator is an independent not-for- profit organisation (Section 8) focused on building the Indian sports and physical activity (SAPA) ecosystem. Its goal as an ecosystem builder is to achieve social outcomes at population scale, using the universality of the sports experience, with an eventual target of universal participation in SAPA for India by 2047. SSA focuses on policy, research and capacity building, and works with government, multilaterals, civil society organizations, and the private sector to help create a data led framework that will ensure that India becomes the lighthouse nation for SAPA by 2047.

About GoSports Foundation

GoSports Foundation is a 15-year-old national-award-winning not-for-profit organisation. The organisation presently support over 200 athletes who aspire to represent India on the largest global stages such as the World Championships, World Cups, Grand Prix, Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, the Olympics and the Paralympics. 13 athletes representing India at the Paris 2024 Olympics have been supported by the organisation over extended periods of time. GoSports Foundation has also participated in the journeys of 15 Olympians, 30 Paralympians and 10 Paralympic medallists (including 4 out of the 5 gold medallists at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games) across multiple editions of the quadrennial events.

(Disclaimer: The above content is a press release and PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.). PTI PWR
PWR

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)