As time is flowing and changes are being visible, sports as a career option has been a drift of choice for many people in recent times. Thanks to the current Indian sports scenario, people in India take sports as a viable career option for themselves. India as a sporting nation is getting developed and is on the right track. With the influx of increased corporate investments, we have sufficient fortune to spend and uplift the industry.
The current growth prospects of the Indian sports market forecasts that the sector has the potential to grow exponentially. Some estimates foresee that the Sports Industry can even reach the mark of 10 billion dollars within the upcoming 5-7 years. Having said that, it is important to understand that there’s a lot which goes behind the scene. It is an onerous task to grab the attention of the big private entities and the government. To invest and uplift an industry, plannings need to be sustainable.
Today, we take a look at how the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is assisting the sports industry in India to fabricate better:
THE CII
Founded in 1895, CII is a non-government, not-for-profit, industry-led and industry-managed organization. It plays a proactive role in India's development process. The CII is a premier business association which has over 8,300 members. The members are from the private as well as the public sectors, including SMEs and the MNCs. It also has a staggering membership of 2,00,000 enterprises from around 250 national and regional sectoral bodies. The main goal of the CII is to create and sustain an environment conducive to the development of India, partnering industry, government, and civil society, through advisory and consultative processes. The CII National Committee on Sports has been developed to serve as a bridge to connect the Sporting entities with the private sectors and the government for investments and tie-ups. The greater goal is to make India play by active grassroots movements, school and university level tournaments.
MAKING INDIA PLAY
The Making India Play initiative taken by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is focused on making the 300 million youths of India play at least 60 minutes per day. The other two broad areas where the Making India Play movement focuses on is creating business opportunities for the sporting fraternities to sustain and develop, and the other one is the way to increase the active investments of the Corporates and the CSR activities. Sports is a goldmine opportunity for private entities to cater to.
Now, you may ask why? Well, sports is an activity which contains heavy emotion. But, that is not the only positive side of the story. Sport is an influential medium for a youth’s holistic education. What I actually mean by that is - A person pursuing sports since childhood has a greater chance of having better leadership, management and emotional qualities than a person who has not played sports since childhood. Sports also unite and build communities. Gone are the days when the Sports period in our school routine was a free period for students. It is now necessary to have a sporting curriculum in normal education routines at school and university level. The only possible way to engage and sustain the business of sport is to first develop the ecosystem. The Indian market has substantial growth prospects because India is a young country. India's youth in 10–24 year bracket is so large that it can defeat the entire population of countries like the USA, Indonesia, Brazil and Pakistan. So, from every aspect, it is a win-win situation for Sports to grow as a viable and competent industry in India provided it has proper backend support.
Although, many people still doubt the potential of sports as a career option in India. It is to be kept in mind that there's been a history of politics and fraud activities in the world of sport. Just to ignite some perspective to it, India currently has 15 active domestic leagues who have started building their grassroots programmes and are evolving as professional bodies with least fraudulent. With the enhancement in technology, the partiality of higher authorities is fading away. While team selection is revolutionizing heavily into a data-centric approach. Now, the big mouths speak less and data does the talking when needed.
So, if you are passionate and believe sports as your calling, don’t sit back and stay bewildered. Believe me or not, it is an exciting time to be alive and witness the revolution of sports in India.
Read about the more information on Sports Schemes in India: Here
