Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

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Varma
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Re: Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

Post by Varma »

jayakris wrote: Mon Oct 09, 2017 5:05 am \No, the Gita was right, somewhat, about Yuki Yuki. The manifestations "sambhav" (occur) from time to time, pretty regularly. As injuries, that is.

In Karman's case, the Gita has an excuse though. It did say, "don't look for results/rewards". If she bombs out, well, we were not supposed to expect anything anyway! :)
No wonder, they say "Gita" has an answer to everything :damn: :damn: :damn:

:D :D :D

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Re: Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

Post by VReddy »

Scroll Article on Mahak Jain
She couldn’t make it to the French Open in May due to a lack of funds.
-- Beginning of rant

We had discussed the absence of Mahak, Mihika from the French Open Jrs back then, as they had taken part in Grade B1 event in Pune instead of the GrandSlam. We had assumed that it was possibly driven by lack of clay court exposure that they preferred the Pune event.

Didn't realize funding is an issue here too. I am still a bit puzzled too - Govt is pumping in so much money, State Govts have so many schemes as well, Lodi has been able to allocate dedicated coach / physical trainer for her, etc,. but somehow none of the options work out to send her to the most important (atleast 1 of the 4) event of her career.

If funding is indeed an issue, Corp Sponsor is one thing, but it reflects pretty poorly on the Tennis Officials / Administrators / Players community too. This hardly needs about Rs 1-2 lakhs here - big amt but we are talking about a Grand Slam here. If they are aware and none of them bothered to come forward for a player who has made the cut for a Grand Slam, then the system deserves the current AITA administration.

-- End of rant

I wish we come to know about these issues before. Obviously we can't sponsor a player completely but at the very least could have done our bit for these imp events
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Re: Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

Post by sameerph »

A bit surprising to hear that Mahak could not play French open juniors due to lack of funds.

It seems AITA did send a team along with coach for both Wimbledon and US open. This is one of the articles saying that-

Sports star article
The disappointment apart, Banthia will be supported as part of the junior Grand Slam team for Wimbledon by the All India Tennis Association (AITA).

The AITA has selected three players, with Mahak Jain and Mihika Yadav as the other two, ranked 42nd and 73 among the girls respectively, to travel for a Grade 1 tournament in Britain followed by the Wimbledon junior tournament.

Arati Ponnappa Natekar, who was the coach of the Junior Fed Cup team earlier this season, will be the coach of the squad. The country’s best ranked junior, the 19th ranked Zeel Desai was also offered a chance to be part of the team, but she had reportedly opted to follow her own plans and travel with her coach Todd Clark, who had helped her reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.
There is a similar article on US open where 4 of our juniors went.

I don't know why AITA did not do the same for French open. Perhaps because they did not think our players had a chance at French open or because it clashed with Asian juniors.

Anyway, it is unfortunate that Mahak had to miss out on French open and hope she will play there next year.
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Re: Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

Post by VReddy »

Brief interview with Vishnu after the doubles win in Shenzhen with Balaji. He called out the support of Sports Authority of Telangana State for the re-birth in his Tennis career as the funds allowed him to go for training stint in Thailand and at the same time, participate in as many as 19 events this year: https://telanganatoday.com/vishnu-balaj ... bles-title
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Re: Ankita Raina thread

Post by VReddy »

knarayen wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 6:50 pm
Prashant wrote: Fri Nov 24, 2017 6:05 pm Fine, perhaps it was a bad choice of words to say "business". Let me re-phrase: a detailed plan including goals, steps to achieve such goals, and budget required for these steps.
This is exactly what professional fund managers do. That's why to me an investment fund makes sense. IMG (international management group) was one such managed by the legendary McCormick who was sufficiently diversified across many players and sports and industries in the western world (US, Australian etc players were all covered under contracts under IMG), i am asking for something similar for Indian players which is long overdue. Our people on Dalal Street have not caught on for some reason.
A bit off-topic but it relates bang-on to our discussion here. Vishnu / Balaji are doing a fund-raiser for their 2018 season. The plan is one of the most detailed that I have come across. There has been a lot of attention put into donor perks too (see the packages on the right side of the screen) - I don't even remember seeing any YouTube publisher providing this level of detail in their donor packages.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jour ... -sports--2#/

Kudos to whoever spent that amount of time to detail it so well! :notworthy:
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Re: Ankita Raina thread

Post by jayakris »

^^^ Serious kudos to Vishnu and Balaji, and whoever made that page. I also like it that they have not exaggerated the expense numbers at all (actually they may have underestimated some items, if at all). Just a super job with that page.
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Re: Ankita Raina thread

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jayakris wrote: Sat Dec 09, 2017 10:04 pm ^^^ Serious kudos to Vishnu and Balaji, and whoever made that page. I also like it that they have not exaggerated the expense numbers at all (actually they may have underestimated some items, if at all). Just a super job with that page.
I am curious as to how this campaign pans out. Whoever designed it, has thought through to accommodate all user groups (ranging from $1 package to $100,000 package!). I see Vishnu's fb post (https://www.facebook.com/vishnuvardhan9 ... 3055293359) has about ~100 people liking and 30 people sharing the post amongst their friends. I noticed backer count increased to 5 from the initial seeded 4 backers.

So using some assumptions, the stats are as below

Overall reach: >2k tennis followers
People connected by the cause: ~150-200 people (assumption that for every person who liked/commented/shared, there might be another person who feels for the cause but does not publicly show it)
Increase in backer count: 1 (it was ~4 already when it started). I think most of the people from the above bucket (~150-200) are reaching out offline to help Vishnu/Balaji out.

Yuki Bhambri's public appeal in the past had fetched Rs 3 lakhs I think (there might have been good amt of offline backing for sure).
On a personal level, some of us were evaluating options for a friend's project around making public data meaningful in India (www.factly.in) and I have not been as optimistic around user funding given its niche segment but this will be a decent pointer for things. Given that likely most of the above backers are doing it offline, it will be difficult to decipher but interesting never-the-less. I don't know Vishnu / Balaji but hopefully one of them will respond when I try reaching around a month down the line on the offline/online impact of the campaign.
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Re: Ankita Raina thread

Post by gbelday »

That's an awesome page. Thanks for sharing, Vishnu. We should make a donation on behalf of sports-india. We can also maybe avail one of the perks as a group (the group of members who make the donation get to meet Vishnu and Balaji in person). Just a thought..
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Re: Ankita Raina thread

Post by sameerph »

Yes, that is a great page. As detailed as one can get while seeking funds.

This has nothing to do with Ankita. So, I think we should move this to either Vishnu or Balaji's thread.
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Re: Ankita Raina thread

Post by Prashant »

VReddy wrote: Sat Dec 09, 2017 8:57 pmA bit off-topic but it relates bang-on to our discussion here. Vishnu / Balaji are doing a fund-raiser for their 2018 season. The plan is one of the most detailed that I have come across. There has been a lot of attention put into donor perks too (see the packages on the right side of the screen) - I don't even remember seeing any YouTube publisher providing this level of detail in their donor packages.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jour ... -sports--2#/

Kudos to whoever spent that amount of time to detail it so well! :notworthy:

This is really excellent! Detailed, thorough, conservative on the estimations (as best I can tell), with realistic goals. Massive kudos.

Moderators, can we please move this to a thread about funding? We need to put this sort of thing in front of other worthies who are struggling for money.
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Re: Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

Post by Varma »

That's a really appealing break-down of expenses and goals. I hope they get the amount they are looking for. Even if they manage to get a third of it, they should be able to work towards their goal of making it to Wimbledon. A couple of big breaks can easily propel them to the ATP level which in turn can bring a few more dollars of prize money.
jayakris wrote: Sat Dec 09, 2017 10:04 pm...I also like it that they have not exaggerated the expense numbers at all (actually they may have underestimated some items, if at all).

That's exactly what I thought too. Their estimates are on the very low end. I hope this gets noticed.

It will be nice if any of our members that are active on twitter can tweet this campaign message and tag the likes of Sports minister Rathore, Bindra, Kohli, Srikanth Kidambi, Sindhu, Saina, Sania et al. You never know who they can hook these guys up with (or contribute a decent amount themselves).

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Re: Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

Post by S_K_S »

I think I'll contribute - need an option which says "I don't expect anything in return!" :p
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Re: Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

Post by VReddy »

There is - just enter an amount without selecting any of the packages.
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Re: Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

Post by VReddy »

Vishnu / Balaji shared a brief video that they have an interesting pre-season planned out on their crowdfunding page: https://player.vimeo.com/video/247601238
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Re: Funding and Sponsorships for Indian Players

Post by VReddy »

Most of us from this forum would have received it offline or via the page for public visible backing, sharing for those who didn't keep in touch yet: Vishnu / Balaji shared an update on their training camp in Coimbatore - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/jour ... pdates/all.

Based on the comments/likes/shares on Vishnu's profile, most of us appear to have contributed offline. I don't know Vishnu or Balaji personally but am up for Gautam's plan of taking one of the perks for Sports-India.com. Count me in if any of you initiate that in your personal conversations with Vishnu / Balaji. I really like the way how they have been professional in handling not just the campaign but the followup with the donors too - top-notch. :notworthy:
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