How GoSports and Axis Bank Are Changing the Playbook for Athlete Support in India

For years, athlete support in India has often been built around a familiar model: foundations and organisations fund nutrition, physiotherapy, rehabilitation, travel and other performance needs, while athletes access these services through external centres, specialists and freelancers, writes Paul R.

A new partnership between the GoSports Foundation and Axis Bank is attempting to change that model.

The two organisations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to launch The Performance Institute (AGTPI), housed at the Centre for Sports Excellence (CSE) in Bengaluru. The initiative is being positioned as more than a CSR partnership. It represents a move towards building an integrated, in-house sports science ecosystem where training, testing, rehabilitation and research can operate under one roof.

For GoSports, which has worked with athletes across disciplines for years, the shift addresses some of the limitations of an outsourced support system. When services are delivered through multiple external providers, athletes may have to work around availability, access to equipment can vary and continuity of care can become difficult.

The new institute brings these functions into a single ecosystem, giving GoSports greater control over how athletes are supported and allowing performance-related services to be integrated rather than delivered in isolation.

The move also brings a greater degree of accountability. With the foundation directly involved in the institute’s operations, the responsibility for the quality and consistency of athlete support becomes more clearly defined. The partnership with Axis Bank adds another layer of institutional accountability, particularly as India’s sports science ecosystem continues to grow and the need for qualified professionals and rigorous standards becomes increasingly important.

The institute’s origins are also rooted in GoSports’ experience of working within the sporting system. While large organisations such as JSW have spent years building extensive high-performance ecosystems, replicating that scale requires substantial resources. GoSports’ approach is different, drawing on years of working directly with athletes and encountering the practical limitations of relying on fragmented, outsourced support.

The Performance Institute is therefore an attempt to build infrastructure based on those experiences, bringing together capabilities that have traditionally remained dispersed.

The journey reflects a broader change in the sports ecosystem as well. When GoSports began its work, raising CSR funding for sports was considerably more difficult, with relatively few corporates willing to invest consistently in sports foundations. Over time, however, the organisation has built a larger CSR base and a team working within the sporting ecosystem on a sustained basis.

That evolution is significant because building high-performance infrastructure requires more than funding individual interventions. It requires institutions that understand the athletes they work with, retain expertise and can build systems that continue beyond individual projects.

The location of the institute could also give the initiative a wider impact. The Centre for Sports Excellence campus already brings together multiple sporting activities in Bengaluru. Adding a dedicated sports science facility could create a hub for athletes, coaches, sports technology companies, equipment manufacturers and other organisations working in performance and rehabilitation.

It could also encourage greater collaboration across sporting disciplines, at a time when India’s sports infrastructure remains unevenly distributed and often concentrated around a limited number of popular sports.

The Performance Institute is not comparable in scale to India’s largest high-performance centres. Its significance lies elsewhere. It offers a more compact, city-based model of integrated athlete support that could potentially be replicated by other foundations, state governments and corporate partners.

For Bengaluru, it is another addition to a city that has steadily emerged as a centre for India’s sports and sports technology ecosystem. For the wider sporting community, the institute will be watched as an experiment in whether a foundation-led, vertically integrated model can deliver more consistent and accountable support to athletes.

The larger question is whether this approach can move beyond one campus and become a template for how India invests in the science behind sporting performance.

For now, Bengaluru has the first version. The rest of India’s sporting ecosystem will be watching.

Paul R. is a Sports Consultant; he can be followed for more updates here.