25+Medals a year
Across Olympic and Paralympic sports. World championships happen every year or two, so this is where a sporting nation shows up between Games.
India belongs on
every podium.
Not just once every four years. Indian athletes now win on world stages all year round: a world chess champion, both Chess Olympiad golds in 2024, the Thomas Cup, world titles in javelin, badminton and boxing. For a country of 1.4 billion people, those wins are still too rare and too often a surprise. The gap isn't talent. It is visibility, money and belief, arriving too late in an athlete's career. Bharat Podium exists to close that gap.
41Olympic medals, all time
60Paralympic medals, all time
2Chess Olympiad golds, 2024
4Women's boxing world titles, 2023
The goal
Make India a force on every world stage.
Our goal is simple to state and hard to do: more Indians in finals, on podiums and at the top of world rankings, across international sport. That means the Olympic and Paralympic Games, but also world championships, world tours and Grand Slams, Diamond League meets, World Cups and Chess Olympiads, where the best in the world meet every year.
The proof that it can be done is already in India. Our Paralympians won 29 medals in Paris and finished 18th. India's badminton men won their first Thomas Cup in 2022, its chess players took both Olympiad titles in 2024, and at the Asian Games India went from 36 medals at Busan 2002 to 106 at Hangzhou 2022. When athletes are backed early, seen, and believed in, the results follow.
We can't coach anyone or build a stadium. What we can do is make sure no Indian athlete goes unseen, and that the people and companies willing to back them can find them.
Our targets
The numbers we'll be held to
These are our ambitions, not forecasts. We publish them so anyone can check our progress against them.
20Sports with an Indian in the top 10
Rankings reward consistency over a whole season of world tours, Grand Prix and Diamond League meets, not one good day.
50+Medals
Twelve or more Olympic medals and forty or more Paralympic medals: India's best Games on both counts.
HalfOf India's international medals
Indian women already win many of the country's biggest titles. Equal backing should mean an equal share of the podiums.
Top 3Asian Games, Doha
And India's best Commonwealth Games ever at home in Ahmedabad, the centenary edition.
50+Junior & youth world medals
Today's junior world medallists are the 2032 and 2036 champions. This is the pipeline, and the earliest sign of whether it works.
What we believe
Our manifesto
- Every athlete deserves to be seen. Not only the ones on the podium. The athlete who finished fourth, the one who missed qualifying by a tenth, the junior champion from a district nobody has heard of. They all get a page.
- Medals are won years before the big stage. Many careers end in the late teens and early twenties, when the money runs out and the family needs a salary. That is where support changes outcomes, so that is where we focus.
- A fan who follows the journey is worth more than one who arrives at the final. We show who competes next and where, so people turn up before the medal, not after it.
- Talent is spread across every state. Opportunity isn't. Our athletes come from 33 states and union territories. We show all of them, including the ones with a single name on the list.
- Women and para athletes are not a side story. They are where India's medal count has grown fastest. They get the same space, the same photos and the same sponsors' attention.
- Champions are grown, not just found. The fourteen-year-old with a borrowed pair of spikes is the 2036 world champion. We want to know their name now, and help the people around them keep them in sport.
- Every number has a source. Medal tallies, records and targets on this site link back to where they came from. If we're wrong, we fix it in public.
How we helpVisibility first.
Visibility first.
Then sponsors.
Visibility
A profile for each of the 3,000 athletes who have represented India, with photos, records, the championships coming up and links to follow them. Featured stories put lesser-known athletes in front of fans, journalists and scouts.
Sponsorship
We will list what each active athlete needs, whether that's a coach, kit, a physio or travel to a qualifier, with real costs. Then we connect them with brands, companies and individuals who want to back them. Under India's CSR rules, training athletes in Olympic and Paralympic sports already counts as eligible spending.
The gap years
Government schemes like the Target Olympic Podium Scheme back athletes already close to a medal. We look just outside that group, at the juniors and fringe internationals who are one good season away and one bad year from quitting.
From the grassrootsWorld champions are found
World champions are found
at age eleven.
A world title is the end of a fifteen-year journey that starts in a school playground. If we only celebrate the finish, we lose most of the athletes long before it.
Talent is everywhere in India. Systems to find it are not. Manipur, with about 2.86 million people, has produced 57 of the athletes on this site, roughly 20 for every million people. Uttar Pradesh, with nearly 200 million, has produced 110.
The difference isn't the children. It's whether someone is watching when they are eleven, and whether there is a coach, a mat or a track within reach when they are fourteen. If every state found athletes at Manipur's rate, India would have more than 24,000 international athletes instead of a few thousand.
That is why Bharat Podium will not stop at elite athletes. We want to help identify children early, follow them as they grow, and put the right support in front of them at each stage.
Birth stateAthletes per million people
Manipur
Haryana
Punjab
Kerala
Uttar Pradesh
Bihar
Athletes on this site by birth state, per million people (2011 census). Birth state is known for about three in four athletes.
- Ages 6–11Play everything
Run, jump, throw, swim, wrestle. Children who play many sports move better and choose better later. This happens in schools and neighbourhoods, or not at all.
- Ages 11–14Get spotted
School meets, district championships and simple fitness tests show who is fast, strong, coordinated and hungry. Most talent is lost here because nobody is looking.
- Ages 14–17Train properly
A real coach, a nearby academy, enough food, the right shoes. This is the first moment a small amount of money changes a career.
- Ages 17–21Bridge the gap
The jump from junior champion to senior international. Studies, jobs and family pressure end more careers here than injuries do.
- Ages 21+Compete for India
Continental and world championships, world tours and leagues, the Asian and Commonwealth Games, the Olympics and Paralympics.
1,000Talent scouts
A network of PE teachers and local coaches in all 36 states and union territories, nominating promising children aged 10 to 16.
5,000Junior profiles
Profiles for junior national medallists and Khelo India Youth Games athletes, so coaches, academies and sponsors can find them early.
1,000Scholarships
Sponsor-funded grassroots scholarships for kit, coaching and travel to competitions, starting with 250 by 2028.
EveryDistrict
At least one nominated young athlete from each of India's 700-plus districts, so no child is too far from the spotlight.
Sponsorship, step by step
How backing an athlete will work
- Profile confirmed. The athlete, or their coach or federation, confirms their Bharat Podium profile.
- Needs listed. They list specific costs for the season ahead: coaching, kit, nutrition, physiotherapy, travel and entry to qualifying events.
- A sponsor chooses. A company, a CSR team or an individual backs an athlete, or a whole sport or state.
- Money goes direct. Funds go straight to the athlete or their academy, with receipts. Bharat Podium never holds an athlete's money.
- Progress in public. Results and updates appear on the athlete's profile, so sponsors and fans can follow the season.
How you can help
1,287 active athletes are competing for India right now.
If you're a coach, mentor, sports psychologist, nutritionist or sports physio, give one call a month to a young athlete. Sign-ups for athletes and sponsors open soon; until then, find an athlete from your state or sport, follow them and share their profile.