Listen

Infosys Foundation Collaborates with GoSports Foundation to Launch ‘Girls for Gold’ Program for Aspiring Women Athletes across India

Grants INR 30 crore towards nurturing champions by providing a comprehensive support system for high performing athletes, coaches and academies

Bengaluru, India – May 2, 2023

Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic and CSR arm of Infosys, today announced that it is collaborating with GoSports Foundation to build the ‘Girls for Gold Program’, a high-performance excellence program for junior and emerging women athletes. This program, spanning an initial term of four years, will identify and support progression of talented Indian women athletes between 13 to 19 years of age through collaborations with high potential academies and coaches in India. The program will include scholarships, coaching, access to academies, and performance recognition.

The program will follow a three-pronged approach. First, it will establish a strong cohort of women athletes who will be equipped to compete at the international level, help them build sustainable careers, and nurture them to become role models for the next generation. Secondly, it will build a pipeline of qualified and capable coaches who will help realize the aspirations of athletes and create an atmosphere of sustained sporting excellence. Third, it will help tech-enable the identified academies to make them world class training centers.

The first cohort of supported academies range across five sporting disciplines, that comprise shooting, boxing, weightlifting, table tennis and badminton. The academies identified as the inaugural beneficiaries of the program are:

  • Lakshya Shooting Club
  • Mary Kom Regional Boxing Foundation
  • Sathish Sivalingam Weightlifting Foundation
  • Raman TT High Performance Centre
  • Yadav Pro Badminton Academy

More academies may be considered for support as the program expands. A Champions Advisory Board has been created, comprising sports personalities that include former Indian shooter and Arjuna awardee Suma Shirur, former national table tennis champion B Bhuvaneswari, and amateur boxing champion and Padma Vibhushan awardee MC Mary Kom.

“We truly appreciate Infosys Foundation’s commitment to creating cutting-edge avenues for girls and young women to become sporting champions for India. The holistic model of the ‘Girls for Gold Program’ builds the ecosystem by investing in human and institutional capacity and creating talent pathways for future generations. We are confident of the impact that this unique program will have on the lives and careers of women athletes we will support and, more broadly, on Indian sport”, said, Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO – GoSports Foundation.

Sumit Virmani, Trustee, Infosys Foundation, said, “At Infosys Foundation, a deep-rooted focus on education and women empowerment have been a key priority over the years. Collaborating with GoSports Foundation furthers this long-standing commitment to empower aspiring women athletes with a holistic ecosystem that can help nurture their dreams. Excellence in sports is a driver of social change and we are confident that this collaboration will help these talented young women realize their potential in sports, in an environment amplified with scientific, and tech-enabled processes.”

Girls for Gold – An Initiative by Infosys Foundation and GoSports Foundation

L-R (clockwise from top): Nandan Kamath, Managing Trustee, GoSports Foundation, Sathish Sivalingam, Olympian, Sathish Sivalingam Sports Foundation, Siddharth Shirur, Secretary, Lakshya Shooting Club, Sumit Virmani, Trustee, Infosys Foundation, Abishek Laxminarayan, Trustee, GoSports Foundation, Shrutee Khurana, Director, Infosys Foundation, Capt. Shanthi, Program Director of Education, Infosys Foundation, B Bhuvaneshwari, Commonwealth medalist, Raman TT High Performance Centre, MC Mary Kom, Olympic medalist, Mary Kom Regional Boxing Foundation, Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO, GoSports Foundation.

To know more about the collaboration, please visit: Girls for Gold – An Initiative by Infosys Foundation and GoSports Foundation

 

About GoSports Foundation

The GoSports Foundation is a national award-winning non-profit organization working towards the development of over 200 of India’s talented, emerging and elite athletes, competing across Olympic, Paralympic, Commonwealth, and Asian Games disciplines, through its scholarship, support, and knowledge-building programs.

For more information, visit: www.gosportsfoundation.in

 

About Infosys Foundation

Established in 1996, the Infosys Foundation supports programs in the areas of education, rural development, healthcare, women empowerment, arts and culture, and destitute care. Its mission is to work with the underprivileged across the country and strive towards a more equitable society. The Infosys Foundation takes pride in working with all sections of society, selecting projects with infinite care, and working in areas that are traditionally overlooked by society at large.

For more details, please log on: https://www.infosys.com/infosys-foundation

 

About Infosys

Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. Over 300,000 of our people work to amplify human potential and create the next opportunity for people, businesses, and communities. With over four decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer clients, in more than 50 countries, as they navigate their digital transformation powered by the cloud. We enable them with an AI-powered core, empower the business with agile digital at scale and drive continuous improvement with always-on learning through the transfer of digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem. We are deeply committed to being a well-governed, environmentally sustainable organization where diverse talent thrives in an inclusive workplace.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NSE, BSE, NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next.

 

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects, financial expectations and plans for navigating the COVID-19 impact on our employees, clients and stakeholders are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding COVID-19 and the effects of government and other measures seeking to contain its spread, risks related to an economic downturn or recession in India, the United States and other countries around the world, changes in political, business, and economic conditions, fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India and the US, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry and the outcome of pending litigation and government investigation. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2022. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company unless it is required by law.

 

Media contacts:

Infosys: PR_India@infosys.com

GoSports: shripoorna@gosports.in