Brainchild of entrepreneur Badal Shah.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: An Indian American business owner in Illinois is at the head of an initiative to get desi youths involved in team sports, particularly basketball.
Badal Shah, the president of Glendale Heights-based chemical manufacturing company Aakash Chemicals and Dye-Stuffs Inc., was told by a pool of business leaders and professionals two years ago that they felt people of Indian origin were “lacking in trust, leadership and teamwork capabilities.”
Rather than take umbrage at that assessment, however, Shah found himself actually agreeing with it.
Determined to solve the problem, Shah realized that it was likely because of the fact that many Indian American youths are kept out of competitive team sports at a young age, which prevents them from learning critical team-based skills that will be useful to them later in life. Indian parents often get their kids involved in more solitary sports, like tennis, and are more preoccupied with academic performance rather than athletic skill.
“Team sports play a huge part in leadership development,” said Shah in an interview with ChicagoBusiness.com. “For [the younger] generation of Indians, there’s more awareness of that, but resources and fundamental training are not there.”
So last year, Shah founded the Dream India Academy, a center dedicated to teaching basketball and teamwork skills to youths of Indian origin who fall between kindergarten and eighth grade. Shah developed an entire basketball curriculum jointly with his brother Aakash, which focused on teaching the fundamentals of the game as well as creating engaging team-based exercises. Additionally, the brothers devised ways to impart lessons on nutrition and physical fitness as well.
The program, which costs about $250, has about 50 enrollees so far, and is proving to be a hit with Indian American parents and children. While Shah says that the program is open to children of all ethnicities – despite the Indian title of the Academy itself – he has focused the initial marketing efforts on bringing in desi families.
“We’d never say no to any kids, but I know for sure there’s a glaring need for Indians for this,” said Shah. “We’re trying to encourage [Indians] to make this a continued improvement process, [and] we want them playing at least two days a week.”
A 31 year-old first generation Indian American, Shah, along with his father and brother, has been renting out gym space in the Chicago suburbs of Oak Brook and Itasca, and hopes to expand even further should there be interest and funds. For more information about the Academy, you can visit the official website here, and watch the YouTube video below:
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com