India’s only individual Olympics gold medallist Abhinav Bindra has teamed up with the chairman of Franchise India, Gaurav Marya to float his own venture fund named Shooting Star LLP.
Bindra as an active game player at his debut entrepreneurial venture would use his experiences to find out the right candidate to invest his money in. For Bindra, it isn’t just the uniqueness of the service or product concept that would make him agree to invest, but also the team behind them.
"Products that have a global reach are important and so are the people behind them. To make ventures successful and sustainable, we will look for people and teams that are driven by passion and hard work,, Bindra told the Economic Times.
Among the sectors, Shooting Star would be investing in sports medicine, technology that transforms human behaviour, urbanisation and health.
"Bindra's main strength is the ability to remain focused. I have been telling him for the past five years to start thinking about becoming a businessman but he was not ready to get into it before he was finished with his Olympic career. He felt he couldn't do both at the same time,” said Marya to the ET.
"The differentiation is his energy and ability to work hard. I know he will not take any shortcuts when working with the companies that we invest in not just as investors but as partners,” added Marya, who besides being a partner is also a friend of Bindra's.
Bindra has already launched a startup for athletes in his hometown Chandigarh in collaboration with TecnoBody, an Italian company.
“This is a sector that is quite unorganised in India and I felt there is an opportunity here,” Bindra told the ET. He added that technology plays a huge role in the training of high-performance elite athletes, and it is missing in India. "My vision is to later introduce micro high-performance centres across the country that will allow more athletes to harness technology to improve their skills.”
Each centre is expected to cost around Rs 2.5 crore to set up. Ankush Passi, 28, is the founder of ayurvedic products company Add Veda, which was Shooting Star's first investment in February this year.