Akshay Maliwal, a UC Berkeley grad and Aditi Maliwal, a Stanford University grad, are mentoring young sports athletes from Asia to get through to top US universities.
Read on to find out how the twins are setting a new benchmark in sports education and management.
Akshay Maliwal, 26, always had his heart on sports, even when he was as young as six.
His tryst with sport started with tennis. However, a shoulder injury caused him to change tracks and concentrate on golf.
He went on a prestigious golf scholarship to UC Berkeley with the aspiration of playing professional golf.
But, the course changed and he got lured into investment banking ultimately.
The calling was strong, however, he says, realising that in some way he wanted to get back into sports.
Thus, Akshay with his twin sister, Aditi Maliwal, also a student-athlete from Stanford University, ventured to start a sports management firm that caters to the growing needs of rising athletes in Asia.
"Asian athletes need proper guidance to compete on a global scale and AddedSport provides exactly that," he says.
Adding in the sports quotient
Starting as a sports management firm, AddedSport has grown into a team of ex-collegiate athletes across Asia, with a primary focus on the Indian market.
The firm spends a lot of time with individual athletes on structuring their athletic training, building their academic standing and ultimately mentoring them through to US universities.
"Usually, junior athletes are able to leverage their sport to receive scholarships for university and/or enter more prestigious universities than just being academically-driven. The Indian sub-continent has primarily focussed on placing highly academic-oriented students in top-tier universities. AddedSport's approach to placement is different. The sports we focus on are golf, tennis, squash, soccer, swimming, field hockey and track and field," Akshay adds.
Thus, the firm is essentially an athletic counsellor working towards placement of athletes in US universities.
The team consists of five ex-collegiate talent, selected based on their athleticism and interest to pursue the sport, with two types of clientele: ones who are actively competing locally, regionally and globally, while the other being students who have pursued sports recreationally and are looking to leverage their athlete and student profile.
After the student is selected the full development is taken on board by the firm and is provided professional counselling, with a devoted physiologist, coach, psychologist accompanied by constant guidance from the management for scholarships in foreign universities.
The firm usually charges a corporate fee between Rs 50,000 and 4,00,000, depending on the resources deployed for the development of the child.
Akshay tells us usually the fee is higher for children closing near to applying to colleges, since they need maximum work for building their profile.
Making junior sportstars
In the last two years, the firm has placed 42 clients over the last two years through the athletic route with 100 percent placements.
The co-founder says that 70 percent of them are Indians, while the other 30 come from Philippines, China, Malaysia and Singapore.
The start-up picks five kids from India and two from Philippines and China from humble backgrounds, training them to build their profiles and helping them get placed in universities abroad.
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