From Playground to Podium

Sujith opened the Batting for India alongside Sachin Tendulkar in the Titan Cup 1996. He has been the Head of Cricket Education at the BCCI’s National Cricket Academy (NCA) since 2019.  With B.E and M.B.A degrees under his belt he is currently working on his PhD. He has worked with elite cricketers and golfers as a life coach and mental toughness coach. Soon after his retirement from cricket, he worked for five years at Wipro Technologies as a behavioural and leadership expert. He is the winner of the prestigious Ekalavya Award for his contributions to cricket for the state and the country.

Nisha Millet is Program Director at Nisha Millet’s Swimming Academy. She is one of the most recognized names in Indian swimming with a career spanning 15 years and winning more than 600 golds. She was the first Indian swimmer to qualify for the Olympics and represented India at the Sydney Olympics in 200 mts Freestyle. She received the  Arjuna Award in 2000 and the Prime Minister’s Award for best sportswoman of the National Games in 1997 & 1999.  Post retirement, Nisha founded her eponymous swimming academy to provide quality swim teaching and to make both adults and kids fall in love with the water the way she did. Nisha has served on the Advisory Board of the Sports Authority of India since 2019. She mentors top swimmers and athletes from various sports and has completed a Counselling certification (Prerana Academy) to help young athletes deal with the mental challenges of competitive sport.

Sunita Maheshwari is a US Board certified Pediatric Cardiologist who trained at Osmania Medical College, AIIMS, Delhi and Yale University in the US. She was the winner of the ‘Young Clinician Award’ from the American Heart Association and the ‘Best Teacher Award’ at Yale University, where she and her husband have recently instituted the Kalyanpur-Maheshwari Endowment for Global Health Innovation.

She is now a parallel healthcare entrepreneur and is the Chief Dreamer and Co-Founder of The Telerad Group. She also runs two non-profits. She sits on the Board of HDFC bank and GSK Pharma in India and chairs their CSR Committees.

Her son Adil Kalyanpur was Indias number 1 junior tennis player who was picked up by Toni Nadal at age 16 to train at the Rafa Nadal Tennis Academy. Unfortunately, he had a string of injuries on the men’s circuit and struggled for 7 years to move up in the ATP circuit. 2024 was his first year without a major injury and he jumped 1000 ATP ranking points in singles and 2000 ranking points in doubles. She has rich parenting experience of supporting an athlete through highs and lows.

Raji is President of Art Mantram, a not for profit institution in the space of art, craft and design and serves on the Executive Committee of the Crafts Council of Karnataka. Having a passion to work in the not for profit craft sector, she helped set up Dwaraka, a project for developing the skills of the Kalamkari artisans in the village of Srikalahasti, Andhra Pradesh. She is a history graduate from Miranda House, Delhi and then a post graduate from Presidency college, Chennai. She honed her artistic skills with a diploma in garment designing at a premier institution in Chennai. She started a children’s garments boutique when she lived in Pune. However, when she moved to Bangalore, her two children took a keen interest in competitive swimming and she totally gave up her business and focussed on her two growing children’s academic and sporting progress. Her daughter Meghana Narayan represented India at the Asian Games.

Tresa has traversed a career from corporate compliance to being a home chef to becoming a restaurateur. She worked for 10 years in the Legal and Compliance team of a Bengaluru corporation, found her calling in food while on a break, and now runs the restaurant, “Coracle” at the Bangalore International Centre. Husband Bruce works for an MNC and they have two daughters Rheanna and Akira. 15-year-old Rheanna started playing football at 9 with BFC Soccer Schools, played for the state teams and won awards as the best players at the sub-junior national championship in 2023 and best defender at the junior national championship 2024 . She represented India U-16 in the SAFF 2024 tournament where India came runners-up. She is currently doing her schooling in the UK at a school that has its football program run by Manchester City.

Nandan Kamath is a lawyer specialising in sports law, technology law, governance and regulation at LawNK, a firm he founded in 2007.  He is co-founder and Managing Trustee of GoSports Foundation and co-founder of the Sports and Society Accelerator.  After graduating from the National Law School of India University, he received the Rhodes Scholarship that took him to the University of Oxford for his graduate studies. Following this, he went on to Harvard Law School and practised in California before returning to Bangalore in 2006 where he has worked since. Nandan recently wrote the book Boundary Lab (Penguin Viking, 2024) which won the Sports Book of the Year Award at the Ekamra Sports Lit Fest 2024.