ATHLETE DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATION IN PERFORMANCE TRAINING & SPORTS
Three stages,
one pipeline...
INFORMS generates the evidence. FINDS identifies the athletes. BRIDGES develops them to the point where the national system is ready to receive them. No stage works without the others - and no other organisation in Maharashtra runs all three.
I N F O R M S
Initiative for Field Outreach and Research for Maharashtra Sport
WHAT IT IS
INFORMS is ADOPT Sport's research and policy cell - a long-horizon instrument designed to generate primary field evidence on athletic potential in Maharashtra's tribal and rural communities. It is the first stage of the pipeline and the foundation everything else rests on.
THE GAP IT FILLS
India's Khelo Bharat Niti 2025 mandates science-backed talent identification in tribal communities and names state governments as primary implementers. INFORMS is designed to be Maharashtra's delivery mechanism for this mandate - generating the primary field evidence the policy requires but no existing institution is positioned to produce.
Existing institutions like Krida Prabodhini and SAI's Special Areas Games work effectively within their mandate - but their systems begin where children have already entered the sporting ecosystem. INFORMS works upstream of that point, generating the baseline data and community-level reach that feeds into and strengthens the broader state infrastructure.
HOW IT WORKS
INFORMS conducts systematic physiological and anthropometric surveys of tribal and rural youth across Maharashtra's rural belts - using movement pattern archetypes that correlate to specific individual Olympic sports. The output is the first scientific baseline dataset for these communities. Findings serve two purposes: they shortlist candidates for 'FINDS camps', and they feed into policy briefs and scheme recommendations for the Maharashtra Sports Department, Tribal Development Ministry, and central government partners. The baseline datasets generated by INFORMS surveys are designed to feed Maharashtra's contribution to the National Monitoring Framework, providing the state with primary field evidence on tribal athletic potential that currently does not exist anywhere in the system.
Shortlisted children from physiological surveys enter the next stage - the FINDS camps for sport introduction and further assessments
F I N D S
Fostering Indigenous talent and Nurturing Development in Sports
WHAT IT IS
FINDS is ADOPT's talent identification and sports awakening programme. It takes children shortlisted from INFORMS surveys into structured residential camps where expert coaches assess athletic potential, introduce them to sport as a career, and begin building the community-level frame of reference for sport that has never existed in these areas.
THE GAP IT FILLS
National talent identification programmes - Krida Prabodhini, SAI's SAG, Khelo India - are built to develop athletes who have already entered the system. FINDS works at the stage before that entry point - reaching children who have the potential but have never yet had a reason or a pathway to connect with these systems.
FINDS goes proactively to the hamlet - and begins with children already shortlisted on physiological criteria, not undifferentiated open selection. The starting point is evidence, not chance.
HOW IT WORKS
FINDS Camp is a one-month residential coaching camp for 40–50 shortlisted children per cohort. ADOPT coaches deliver discipline-specific training, introducing athletes to their sport, building foundational technical skills, and developing an emotional connection with it. The top cohort progresses to BRIDGES Basic, selected on technical acquisition, physical metrics, and senior coach assessment.
Beyond selection: Children who do not advance to BRIDGES return home with a new understanding of sport as a career and the language to advocate for local infrastructure. A second camp opportunity is available after two years to account for uneven adolescent development and protect late developers.
DISHA Curriculum
Every child who attends a FINDS camp goes through DISHA - a parallel curriculum covering Knowledge (sport as a career, pathways, schemes), Inspiration (role models, aspiration), and Caution (doping, conduct, mental health). The curriculum is designed and delivered by Educationists, SEL experts, working professionals and elite athletes.
The culture change happens whether or not the athlete advances in the pipeline.
The top cohort from FINDS enters the BRIDGES Programme which introduces them to a high performance ecosystem to further their game.
B R I D G E S
Building Resilient Interventions for Development and Growth of Elite Sports
WHAT IT IS
BRIDGES is ADOPT's high-performance athlete development programme — where identified talent is systematically converted into national and international competitive excellence. It operates in two sequential stages, each providing a progressively elite performance ecosystem: coaching, nutrition, sports psychology, medical support, kitting, and equipment.
THE GAP IT FILLS
The district-to-national transition is where India loses the most athletic potential. It is not a talent problem — it is a resource cliff. State-level support runs out. National institutional support has not begun. For rural and tribal athletes, this cliff is steeper: they arrive without club networks, private coaching, family sporting knowledge, or urban infrastructure.
No government scheme holds this space. BRIDGES does.
HOW IT WORKS
BRIDGES Basic (2 years) is a residential coaching programme entered after FINDS Camp. Target: inter-district and inter-zonal excellence. Athletes receive the full performance ecosystem — coaching, psychology, supplementation, diet, medical facilities, insurance — alongside schooling for educational continuity. Programme culminates in state-level competition representation, opening pathways to Krida Prabodhini, Lakshavedh, SAI NCoEs, and private schemes.
BRIDGES Advance targets national and international circuit entry and sustained top-10 ranking. Athletes who do not gain entry to external schemes after Basic continue here. The programme also incorporates athletes from existing rural and tribal coaching centres at equivalent levels. Partnerships are built with coaches meeting defined standards of technical expertise and philosophical alignment with ADOPT.
SAKSHAM Curriculum
SAKSHAM runs throughout BRIDGES across two domains. Domain 1 (Priority at Basic stage): personality development — communication, language, emotional intelligence, professional conduct. Domain 2 (Priority at Advance stage): learning to learn — metacognition, financial literacy, career mapping, life after sport. Physical excellence and the ability to inhabit the life it earns you are not the same thing. SAKSHAM closes that gap.
BRIDGES Advance ends when an athlete enters State or Central Government elite sports programmes, public sector sports patronage through the sports quota and private elite sports programmes.
ADOPT does not take athletes to the Olympics - we take them across the critical resource and systems cliff - ready and complete - to the door of the institutions that can take them further...
PROOF OF CONCEPT
From the National Sports Policy 2001 to Khelo Bharat Niti 2025, India's sports framework has consistently identified rural and tribal communities as the starting point for building a genuine athletic talent pipeline. INFORMS, FINDS, and BRIDGES are ADOPT Sport's ground-level response to that vision — built from a decade of field evidence on what rural and tribal athletes in Maharashtra need and what it actually takes to reach them. Every design decision traces back to something that happened on the ground.
Location: Thakar tribal hamlets, Alibaug, Raigad district, Maharashtra
Year: 2021
1 in 12
outperformed the current Maharashtra state record for his age group
1 in 6
ran at par with the state record - uncoached, barefoot, non-ideal conditions
WHAT WAS REVEALED
“The potential was not hidden. It was simply in a place no system had ever looked.”
Existing talent identification programmes are designed to work with athletes who have already found their way to the system. The Alibaug survey asked what happens if we go upstream of that - into communities the system hasn't yet reached. The answer became the founding evidence for INFORMS. This survey reaffirmed that Maharashtra’s tribal belts contain a measurable, uncharted athletic talent pool that primary physiological surveying can identify before any other institution reaches it.
WHAT IT VALIDATED IN THE PROGRAMME DESIGN
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Proactive hamlet-level surveys are the only mechanism that reaches uncoached talent. Waiting for self-presentation structurally excludes this population
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Physiological and anthropometric data collected before coaching intervention establishes the true baseline - and it is significantly higher than the system assumes
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Movement pattern archetypes correlating to specific Olympic disciplines can be identified in uncoached populations - making sport allocation possible at the survey stage.
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Introducing shortlisted children to their sport through short, immersive residential camps with qualified coaches can reveal a second layer of potential - those who genuinely merit entry into the performance ecosystem.
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Running a parallel curriculum alongside selection - like ADOPT Sport's DISHA curriculum - builds sports awareness and career literacy at the community level, regardless of whether every child advances in the pipeline. The culture change happens in either case.
Location: Wrestling centre, Murgud village, Kolhapur district, Maharashtra
Duration: 2015 – 2023 (8 years)
From 2015, the ADOPT founding team worked with wrestlers at a wrestling center in Murgud village near Kolhapur, providing sports performance training, nutritional planning, injury rehabilitation, mentoring, supplementation and psychological support to wrestlers from villages across Kolhapur district who practices at the center. Eight years building champions there proved what the zero-compromise system produces — and what it still lacked
10
National medals gained after intervention from an initial count of 0.
3
Women wrestlers represented India internationally, up from 0.
7 months
from major shoulder surgery to GOLD for a woman wrestler at a national level tournament
52
Athletes benefited from SEL sessions,working on their social-emotional development in the last year of engagement
THE MOMENT THAT DEFINED SAKSHAM
"Can I have some eggs, please?" - a question that ADOPT Sport's International Wrestler and a National Champion could not ask at an international tournament in Romania.
She did not have the language, the confidence, or the frame of reference to navigate that interaction in an unfamiliar country. She had been trained to compete at the highest level of her sport. She had the physical preparation, the tactical knowledge, the competitive record. What the system had not given her was the ability to function independently in the world outside the wrestling mat.
This single moment made visible a gap that no coaching programme had named: the distance between athletic excellence and the ability to inhabit the life that excellence earns you. It became the founding argument for the SAKSHAM curriculum within BRIDGES, specifically Domain 1, which addresses language, communication, emotional intelligence, and the professional conduct needed to represent oneself on national and international stages. The baseline study with almost 52 wrestlers at the center reiterated the need for a structured engagement programme.
WHAT 10 YEARS AT MURGUD VALIDATED IN THE PROGRAMME DESIGN
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The zero-compromise system works — when training, nutrition, rehabilitation, and mentoring are provided together, rural athletes reach national and international level
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The district-to-nationals gap is a resource cliff, not a talent cliff — athletes were not failing because they lacked ability but because they lacked the surrounding system
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Physical and competitive development alone is insufficient — athletes arriving at international stages from rural backgrounds need structured development of communication, life skills, and the capacity to navigate the world sport opens to them
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Community transformation follows athletic success — parents who would not previously consider sport as a career began sending daughters proactively after witnessing the achievements of elite women wrestlers who came from similar families as theirs.
PARTNERS
