Anup once told me, "there's a moment every athlete meets."
Not in a stadium. Not on court. In silence.
The day you retire, the phone stops ringing.
No physio bookings. No invites. No "sir, can you come for this event?" The same world that once knew your match schedule by heart suddenly doesn't remember your name.
And if you're one of the lucky ones - if you were successful - the story is stranger.
When you're playing, money comes in from everywhere. Prize money. Sponsorships. Match fees. Camps. League contracts. Appearance gigs. Sometimes you don't even know what's coming from where. You only notice one thing: your bank balance keeps climbing.
So you spend. Not because you're careless - because your life is a full-contact sport. You're traveling, recovering, training, competing. You're told to focus on performance. You're surrounded by noise, adrenaline, and urgency. Nobody sits you down and teaches you compounding, tax, insurance, scams, or how short careers actually are.
And suddenly, one day you wake up and you see the truth: you weren't building wealth and stability. You were burning fuel.
For most athletes, it's worse.
Because the "successful athlete" is the exception. The rule is the 99%.
The 99% are the state champions, the national qualifiers, the district legends, the players who trained for a decade and never got the big league contract. Many retire with no degree, no job skills, no industry experience - nothing to translate their discipline into a second career. They look for coaching jobs not because it's their calling, but because it's the only door that's even half-open.
This reality is so stark that India's most respected coach, Pullela Gopichand, has publicly warned families about the risks of pursuing sport without financial backing - because the system can be unforgiving when there isn't a fallback.
AfterSport exists because we refuse to accept that this is "just how it is."
Patronage, not sponsorship.
We believe something simple: athletes don't need charity. They need a system.
Sponsorship is transactional. It's marketing. It says: "Wear our logo. Win. Stay visible."
Patronage is belief, built for the long game. It says: "We'll back you - even when you're not in the limelight - so you can build a stable future."
AfterSport is modern patronage - structured, scalable, and designed for real athlete lives. Real money. Real learning. Real stakes.
Anup stood on badminton's biggest stages: Arjuna Awardee, Olympian, former India #1. He captained the Thomas Cup team and defeated Olympic champion Taufik Hidayat at the 2007 World Championships - one of those matches people still talk about years later.
But what stayed with him wasn't applause.
It was what he saw after retirement - athletes who had represented India, who had fought for every point, quietly struggling to pay rent. Champions with medals in drawers and anxiety in their eyes. People who had given their best years to sport with nothing stable underneath them.
Prashanth saw the same cliff from a different angle. He owns the Bangalore Raptors in the Premier Badminton League and has built sports ventures and training ecosystems in Bangalore. Outside sport, he's spent his life building technology - right where money and systems are being rewritten.
He kept asking the obvious question: If AI and modern fintech can transform finance for everyone else, why are athletes still left with vague advice and no infrastructure?
Then Praveen joined the conversation - someone who has built sport's scaffolding in India: brands, distribution, training environments, and communities. He's lived the ecosystem end-to-end: what it takes to build athletes, support them, and scale the machinery around them.
The three of us aligned on one belief: Athletes don't need motivation. They have that in excess. Athletes need a system that doesn't vanish when the spotlight moves.
So we built AfterSport - a Second Innings Plan that turns patronage into infrastructure.
How it works.
We kept the model simple on purpose. Athletes receive monthly grants - real money, not "points," not discounts. In return, they complete four short financial lessons per month, delivered by an AI coach on WhatsApp, where athletes already live. The money is routed into a long-term investing habit - built for compounding, not impulse.
Over 12 months, athletes can receive up to ₹5 lakhs and complete 48 lessons that teach them how money actually works.
Not theory. Practice. Not a lecture. A loop.
And because this is built for India at scale, the program is designed to be supported through CSR - turning corporate intent into a measurable, auditable impact pathway.
What we're really building.
We're building the thing Indian sport never had: a financial starting line.
Not everyone will become a millionaire. That's not the point. The point is that no athlete should retire into confusion.
Sport already teaches discipline, sacrifice, and resilience. AfterSport teaches the missing skill: how to convert those traits into a stable future.
We are not here to sell dreams. We are here to build outcomes.
AfterSport is not a campaign. It's a commitment - with structure, accountability, and dignity.
Because when the phone stops ringing, athletes deserve more than silence.
— Prashanth, Anup & Praveen
