Its Aug 31, 2016. The Olympics just concluded and India, a country of 1.3 billion people who had won 10 Olympic Gold Medals in London Olympics 2012, finished its tally winning 20 Gold medals. Its notable India had not won an individual gold medal till year 2008 ever and had won a total of 9 gold medals since the games began over a 100 years ago. So one wonders what changed for India?
Well it goes back to year 2008, when after yet another dismal performace by India, a group of enterpreneurs in silicon valley,CA decided to take the matters into their own hands. They raised 100 million dollars from some of the top silicon valley venture capital firms and took the bottom up approach with a goal to win 10 Gold medals in 2012 Olympics.
They identified 20 olympics sporting events to focus on. Next they set out to hire some of the most successful coaches (whose teams had won olympics Gold medals atleast twice) and players (who had won atleast 2 golds in their events).The goal was to have 2 coaches for each sport ( a coach and ex gold medalist) . This was a hard and daunting task but they did it in silicon valley style- The coaches received 2 million dollars per year with a provision to make additional 5 million dollars if their team win an olympic gold in 2012.
With the coaches lined up, they set out to gather the top talent available in each sport in a model similar to Indian Idol or American Idol. In each of the 30 cities that they conducted their first rounds, there were thousands of atheletes for each sport. There was so much energy and passion and for the first time in the country's history, had people's passion for sports was allowed to bubble up and get channelled into the dream of become India Idol for their favourite sport. Each of these events were televised live for all the sporting fans in India which generated even more excitement and interest and also started generating revenue for the company.
In 60 days, from each city, top 100 atheletes were identified to go on to national rounds who would go through gruelling training and testing over next 120 days. New champions and new fans were created every day. Newpapers, TV channels, people in buses, trains, at work talked about it. At the end of 6 months, the coaches and the company had identified 50 atheletes for each sport who trained for 3 years both locally in India in new facilities built as well as internationally.
During these 3 years these atheletes competed in international events to gain exposure. 6 months before London Olympics 2012, top atheletes from each program were selected and sent for Olympic trails and as you would imagine, India for the first time in olympic history had qualified for 20 sports in Olympics. India ended the games with 10 Gold medals.
The rest as they say is history.
Cheers,
Navneet
