Parminder Gill is co-founder and head (business) of Bangalore-based Edusports Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2009), a pioneer sports education company which delivers extensively researched fitness and sports programmes to 500,000-plus students in 800 K-12 schools across 250 cities countrywide, through a task force of 800 certified physical education instructors. Apart from offering structured physical activity curriculums formulated by educationists, psychologists and sports experts, EduSports also provides sports equipment, teacher training, self-defence modules for girl children, weekend parent engagement programmes, summer and outbound adventure camps. Newspeg. Last October, EduSports introduced a new EduSports app for parents to monitor their child’s fitness and sports education progress. History. An engineering and business management alum of Pune University and Arizona State University, USA, with rich working experience in multinational IT and education technology companies including Trigent Software, Planetasia and Collabera, Gill decided to veer off the normative corporate track to promote Oakside Technologies, Bangalore, an IT solutions company, in 1996. The business lasted only four years, after which he returned to the corporate world. In 2009, Gill together with indefatigable serial entrepreneur Saumil Majmudar and two others promoted EduSports, which raised Rs.2.5 crore from their personal savings, parent company SportzVillage and angel investors. Direct talk. “Apart from our personal experience of children becoming increasingly addicted to television and computers instead of engaging in physical activity, Saumil and I shared the belief that there weren’t enough opportunities for enjoyable sports activities. We discovered that despite physical education being an integral part of every school curriculum, it doesn’t get the importance it deserves nor is it professionally delivered. School sports curriculums are outdated, age-inappropriate and non-inclusive. Thus we promoted EduSports for children to experience the magic of sports through world-class and professionally delivered sports programmes,” says Gill, who has helped scale the company’s service delivery model to remote locations such as Moga (Punjab) and Sedam (Karnataka). Fees: Rs.1,500-2,000 per student per year. Future plans. Unsurprisingly, EduSports has ambitious plans for the future. “Given our deep understanding of sport and physical education, we plan to reach 3,000 schools and 3 million students over the next three years. Next on our agenda is to collaborate with government schools. Our long-term goal is to convince policy-makers that if we get children in all schools to play regularly and improve their physical fitness, India’s talent pool and chances of international sporting success will improve dramatically,” enthuses Gill. Wind beneath your wings! Sruthy Susan Ullas (Bangalore)
