Crowdfunding for Foreign Training: How It Has Worked for Indian Athletes

Vishwaraj Jadeja, India’s fastest long-distance ice skater, trains in the Netherlands under coach Wim Nieuwenhuizen because the specialised ice and coaching his sport needs barely exist in India. Getting there and staying there costs real money that no Indian government scheme was built to cover, since speed skating sits well outside the country’s usual sporting infrastructure. Jadeja turned to crowdfunding to fund his trip to the 2017 Asian Winter Games in Sapporo, and years later, a New York-based entrepreneur, Jay Patel, personally funded his participation at the 2022 World Cup. Two different routes, the same underlying problem: a genuine, specific gap between what a scheme covers and what an opportunity costs.

When crowdfunding makes sense

Crowdfunding is not a substitute for the schemes this platform covers elsewhere, TOPS, Khelo India, SAI training centres. It works when a specific, real gap exists that those schemes were never built to cover: a training block with a foreign coach that is not part of any federation programme, a one-off competition entry the family has to fund itself, or, as judoka Avtar Singh’s family experienced, even the cost of the parents travelling to watch their child compete at the Olympics.

Avtar Singh represented India in judo at Rio 2016, and estimates for a full Olympic preparation cycle in his sport run to ₹30 lakh–₹40 lakh. His family ran a documented fundraiser on ImpactGuru to help cover it, and separately had to crowdfund their own travel just to be present at Rio. Shot putter Om Prakash Singh Karhana, preparing for the same Tokyo cycle, needed roughly ₹1.5 lakh a month for his high-protein diet, supplements, specialised shoes and competition travel, costs a scheme built around one national training centre does not always reach.

The two routes

Platform crowdfunding. Ketto and Milaap both run dedicated sports fundraising categories, with Milaap specifically offering athletes 0% platform fees on sports campaigns. A campaign needs the same specificity a sponsorship one-pager needs: a named, costed purpose (a training block, a specific competition, a piece of equipment), not an open-ended appeal. This platform’s sponsorship one-pager article covers the same specificity principle in more depth; it applies here too.

Direct individual sponsorship. Jay Patel’s support for Jadeja’s 2022 World Cup campaign was not a platform crowdfunding campaign; it was one individual, moved by a specific athlete’s story, funding a specific trip directly. This route depends on an athlete’s story actually reaching the right person, which is less predictable than a platform campaign but has precedent.

What this platform has already covered on the emotional side

This platform’s Activities Sport Requires series covers Olympic shooter Ayonika Paul’s own crowdfunding campaign, run through Olympic Gold Quest on Milaap, for a ₹3 lakh sports jacket she needed ahead of Rio 2016, from the angle of what it takes to ask. That article and this one are meant to be read together: one is about the courage the ask requires, this one is about the mechanics of running the campaign once the decision to ask has been made.

Setting a realistic expectation

None of these are guaranteed outcomes. A crowdfunding campaign’s success depends heavily on how specific and verifiable the ask is, how far the athlete’s existing story can travel, and, often, on being willing to ask more than once through more than one channel. Families should treat crowdfunding as a documented option for a specific, genuine gap, not as a reliable primary funding source to plan an entire training pathway around.