Corporate Riches Aid Sports Excellence

PARTH JINDAL, heir to the $23-billion JSW Group and founder of JSW Sport, is a co-franchisee of Indian Premier League's franchise Delhi Capitals. He also owns football club Bengaluru FC as well as PKL's kabaddi team Haryana Steelers. But the sports enthusiast, who has represented Maharashtra in squash, is most passionate about his not-for-profit Olympic training institute Inspire Institute of Sports (IIS) in Vijaynagar (Karnataka). The academy, launched in 2017, has trained Olympians Sakshi Malik, Neeraj Chopra and Bajrang Punia and is currently grooming 200 athletes. Jindal wants to spot talent and train them to ensure that India joins the league of top five sporting nations.

Sports For Development, a buzzword in countries such as U.K., Australia and Canada, is fast gaining momentum among Indian corporate philanthropists. Reliance, JSW and Tata Group are leading the pack, but there are numerous others as well making an impact at the grassroots.

According to the 2023 edition of the Sports And CSR Report by social sector legal firm Pacta and non-for-profit company Sports And Society Accelerator, sports philanthropy accounts for just 1% of CSR spending in India. However, between FY14 and FY21, it has risen 27% to ₹242 crore. In FY21, Reliance was the biggest spender (₹49 crore). Kotak Mahindra spent ₹17 crore, followed by Tata Steel, which spent ₹16 crore. JSW till date has spent ₹200 crore.

Neera Nundy, co-founder of CSR consulting firm Dasra, says sports philanthropy is gathering steam, especially among the new generation. "It is also to do with inter-sectionality. Sports and gender is a very powerful combination, so is sports and health. Including sports in employability and life skills makes sense. So, sports can become a tool to address development issues."

In 2013, Section 135 of Companies Act, 2013, made CSR mandatory for every company having net worth of ₹500 crore or more, or turnover of ₹1,000 crore or more, or net profit of ₹500 crore or more. Training to promote rural, nationally recognised sports, as well as Paralympic and Olympic sports, was included as a CSR-eligible activity. In 2016, the Act allowed building, maintenance and upgrade of sports infrastructure as CSR activity. This encouraged organisations to invest in sports in a more concerted way.

Batting for Sports

Reliance Foundation's 'sports for development' platforms, which support schools and colleges, have touched the lives of 2.15 crore youngsters. They scout talent and have so far reached out to 90 lakh youth and children. Reliance also runs residential football academy Reliance Foundation For Young Champs. The conglomerate has also partnered with Odisha government to set up a high-performance centre for athletics that not only grooms talent in the state but is also creating a template for long-term development of athletics.

Tata Group has integrated 'sports for development' and 'sports excellence' across group companies to increase access and participation at individual and community levels and combined these with initiatives for improving elite performances. It has set up development academies for football, archery, athletics, hockey and climbing.

Vedanta Sports, the CSR arm of Vedanta Group, has three residential academies in Rajasthan and Goa where it is training 100 boys in football. It also has non-residential football programmes in schools in rural India where it has trained around 10,000 boys and girls. Vedanta Sports also runs an archery academy in Jharkhand. It has developed a proprietary tool that generates a report on potential football talent (right from age of six) by looking at eight different criteria. "A player goes into a box and does a set of drills with projectors and cameras. We have data of 3,000 boys and girls in Rajasthan. We give this data to the coach for comprehensive understanding of a player’s strengths and weaknesses," says Annanya Agarwal, president, Vedanta Sports.

The Dani Foundation, CSR arm of Asian Paints promoters Jalaj and Vita Dani, has partnered with the Sports Authority of Gujarat to set up the ELMS Foundation in Nadiad that has touched the lives of over one lakh children. Its Sports For Transformation Project offers one-hour physical education in rural schools. It also supports 300 residential athletes and has trained 21,000 physical education instructors till date. The foundation, which also owns Chennaiyin FC, runs 25 schools in nine districts of Tamil Nadu where on average 250 children are coached in football every year.

"In football, it's a pipeline from grassroots to schools and then professional. In Chennaiyin FC, we have groomed five players and sent them to FC Metz in France. We have a team which scouts for talent across the country. We train them in Chennaiyin FC," says Vita Dani, founder, Dani Foundation.

Mastek co-founder R. Sundar and his wife Usha Sundar run the Hi5 Youth Foundation where they are training 4,000 children from tribal areas of eight states in basketball. Unlike most philanthropists, who are aiming to produce champions, Hi5 is following a model of excellence. "We are not trying to produce Olympic athletes. Our intent is to get underprivileged children to experience success. We want them to experience what it is to be excellent at something. The teams we are coaching are doing exceptionally well in local tournaments, and that gives them immense confidence," says Sundar.

The Hi5 Youth Foundation invests ₹5-6 crore every year for promoting basketball. Over last nine years, it has been spending ₹10,000-25,000 per year on each child depending on his/her proficiency. It has built 18 basketball courts in schools; each requires an investment of ₹30 lakh.

Shashi Kiran Shetty, founder, Allcargo, has been funding women’s golf for a couple of years and has invested around ₹2 crore so far. "I realised that talented women golfers are not getting the support they deserve." Kiran is sponsoring golfers Avani Prashant, Pranavi Urs and Sneha for international tournaments.

At JSW, the seeds of IIS were sown way back in 2012 when Jindal met tennis legend Mahesh Bhupathi for lunch when he was working with a hedge fund in U.S. after his undergraduation. "I was always concerned about the dismal medal tally of India in the Olympics and wondered why despite being such a large country we weren't able to win. I asked the same question to Mahesh (Bhupathi). He told me India doesn't focus on grassroots development at all. That conversation stayed with me and when I returned to India in 2013, I discussed the idea with my family."

IIS is just one of the initiatives of the group. It has a PPP (public private partnership) with Haryana and Odisha governments for and swimming, a judo centre in Manipur and a high-altitude centre in Himachal Pradesh. It is training about 6,000 athletes in five Olympic sports — boxing, wrestling, judo, track & field and swimming. IIS's 38-member scouting team is always on the lookout for talent in rural India. IIS also takes care of the children's education and nutrition. "We have a strict policy wherein we tell the talent that if they don't pass in academics, they will have to drop out of the institute. In sports, one injury can end an athlete's career, whereas the education will be with the athlete for life. We have also taken up the responsibility of re-integrating a child who doesn't stand a chance to make it to professional sports in a school in his/her hometown. We bear their education cost till he/she turns 18," explains Jindal.

Overall Development

Most philanthropists supporting sports are also backing causes like education, malnutrition and healthcare. "Sports include health, education and nutrition. If you are developing a sports person, you have to take care of his/her health and education as well," says Priya Agarwal Hebbar, chairperson, Hindustan Zinc and non-executive director, Vedanta. Hebbar says every athlete at Vedanta academies focuses on education. "When you come into our system, you will be in a better school and your academics will be much more looked after," she adds.

According to Dani of Dani Foundation, there is scientific evidence that children good at sports do well in education too. Therefore, the Dani family, in its hometown of Kapadvanj in Kheda district of Gujarat where it runs schools with 7,000 children, has started a project called Sports For Transformation of Society. "The idea is to bring about a transformation of society through sports. It is a great leveller. Winning or losing is completely on merit. We as a family always value that," says Dani.

The Hi5 Youth Foundation is using sports to prevent students from dropping out of school. Usha Sundar of Hi5 Foundation says baseball has reduced female drop-out rate drastically. "They prefer to spend longer hours at school playing the game because the moment they reach home they would be asked to get involved in household chores."

The foundation has a programme called Pathways To Success for students who have completed 10th grade. "They continue to play basketball but we support them in their studies so that they complete 12th. Our goal is to ensure that 100% children in the basketball programme complete 12th grade," says Usha, adding that the drop-out rate is extremely high post Class X. The programme also supports students in three years of under-graduation. "Our first batch graduated this April. All of them are first generation learners," she adds.

Measurability

Most Indian philanthropists support education or healthcare as opposed to causes such as gender violence, mental health or climate change because the former is measurable. If drop-out rate in a school falls or enrolments rise, you have generated a return on investment.

How measurable is sports philanthropy? It is extremely measurable, says JSW's Jindal. "If the athletes you groom win tournaments, if someone who is National No. 7 is now No.1, or has got selected to represent the country, your efforts have paid off. When we recruited Neeraj (Chopra) in 2015, he was throwing less than 75 metres, today, he is throwing 89 metres and winning medals after medals," he says. "You can see a child improve from malnutrition to normal but suddenly he stops coming to the anganwadi as his parents are migrant workers and have moved to a different district. There is no way you can measure his progress. You may pump in a lot of money but there is no measurability of impact."

Vedanta's Annanya Agarwal agrees. He cites the example of the national women's football team which, he says, has been able to qualify for the FIFA World Cup thanks to talent groomed by Vedanta Sports. "We have Vedanta Women’s Football League in Goa which we have been running for six seasons. Several footballers like Karishma Shirvoikar and Michel Castanha have been selected for the national team." Agarwal is confident that the women's football team would make a mark in the international arena within the next 10 years.

Karan Singh, MD, ACG Worldwide, has been supporting the NBA Jump programme for close to a decade. It has touched the lives of over 40,000 children but only 20-30 make it to NBA Academy in JP Greens in New Delhi every year. Of them, only some make it to elite level or international leagues. "Do you call that a failure or a success? I would call it a success because those who reach that far make basketball or for that matter any sport aspirational for other kids," says Singh.

The Hi5 Youth Foundation measures the societal impact basketball has created in communities where it works. "Child marriages have stopped as 100% of our girls are finishing 12th grade. Basketball has allowed tribal children to compete with city kids. Winning against city schools builds their self-esteem and self-confidence. Many tribal girls have told their parents they will not marry the boy they have selected," says Sundar.

Indian philanthropists are using sports for development but these are still early days. The good news, however, is that the journey towards developing India as a sporting nation has begun.