From Scratch to the Paralympics: Building India's Blind Football Team | Sunil Mathew

Arjun Thomas: ⁓ Sunil, ⁓ thank you for taking the time to kind of have this chat. The Indian Blind Football Federation ⁓ has been around for I over a decade now. ⁓ And definitely to get into the But before we get into that, can you take me into ⁓ what it's like as a spectator ⁓ for a sport like this? Because I have not been in one these events. ⁓ And I'm really to see
Sunil: ⁓ we to date about three working in in a four-year, which is the part of the office. ⁓ And ⁓ also looking at, we looking ways where we can, we can have people work on computers, desktops. So we have a trainings, we started a training center middle of 2008 types. And then that ran successfully for five years. It's not taking, you know, visually impaired only how we can rehabilitate. That's the goal.
Arjun Thomas: if the reality kind of maps with what I have in my head, if that makes sense. So I'd love to get a first person's view of what it is to be a spectator in a football match.
Sunil: Foot reflexology was another one. And the last one was I used to play and then my give back to football. That's the whole back. So the visually impaired in India, like I was just saying, was something that was being, ⁓ know, unaddressed. This is a huge area of the population where if you're differently able, ⁓ you would not even considered as mainstream to find out a job, or get, know, given other things like respect in society. So we were creating this whole platform. Excellent. Thanks Arjun for this opportunity. Hi, my name is Sunil. Good to be on your podcast. So ⁓ the idea of blind football ⁓ is what you actually envision it. So basically you're playing totally with no sight, ⁓ sound driven and a lot of intuition. You have to know and understand where the other player is and imagine running freely in the ground.
Arjun Thomas: Right.
Sunil: through this NGO where people were finding out opportunities to work, get placed, show the society at least, live an independent life and earn bread. Football, I always was interested, but sport is something free. We all run easily, just get out on the field and enjoy ourselves. But then there were barriers, always there were barriers. How can a visually impaired play this, that? So the visually impaired primarily used to do sedentary sports. but with other players similarly running towards you or moving past you. And that can be quite a nightmare if you were to just close your eyes and try and even move in a space. So, play football exactly what you said. It's scary when you think about what could happen, but otherwise it's something that is something that has even ⁓ got me into understanding more of the game. And I'm learning every day. Chess or cricket was okay, but still involved some movement. They were okay. there's India, India had black cricket at some athletics, never play football. So then he had to get a ball first time. didn't have even a coordinate, an organization in India. And that's the back of why we're doing it. And in India, especially being, you know, somewhere where it's unaddressed and it's quite a large population. have 15 million, 15 million is what I hear officially. It's quite different from 11 aside football game where there are 5 people on the ground in each team, so there are totally 10 in the ground with 4 totally blind players and a sighted goalkeeper actually as a part of the team which makes it even more interesting. So basically there's a blind player shoots against a sighted goalkeeper like you and me here and scores a goal.
Arjun Thomas: How large?
Sunil: from the WH because the Indian government's last statistics was 2011. ⁓ look at the link to see for a spectator. From the spectator perspective, very first time you were if you were to see this game it's a wow-feel. ⁓ my god this is not true. Sure there's some hidden technology driving these guys to move but when you know the rawness of it and how it's been actually brought together it's something very interesting and that got me into this.
Arjun Thomas: Wow! Any reason why, do you have a sense of why they don't, as a part of the census, get a sense of the differently abled?
Sunil: A couple of things. One is in at-home because of the ⁓ mass society stigma ⁓ those are the quick answers but also when the census was taken and when you go to a home to find out in India typically you have to go to a house find out the number of members you never disclose that your family member is defileable. Then it's a cultural thing the society comes to know.
Arjun Thomas: Great, okay. That's fascinating. So what is the spectator experience? Is it ⁓ a large arena? ⁓ How many people on average? ⁓ Given that it's very ⁓ sound driven, is the idea for the ambient environment to be as quiet as possible to allow the football players to hear? So what is it like being a spectator in those stands? It's a cultural thing.
Sunil: lot of other issues kick in. But on the contrary, right now, the impetus, at least the forums I work with, the activists that we work with, we want to make sure that the next census, is due coming on in 27, ⁓ and out, the results should be out at 28. We're finding out, we're trying to motivate people to come out with these numbers by giving them scholarships, chances to study at least, maybe even jobs. But jobs are difficult in government spaces, private spaces. It's something like I said, it's a wow feel plus you have to follow a certain discipline and rules, just like you likely said. You have to be silent throughout the game. When there's a goal scored or when there's a break in play, have this time alternate like, like football is a mix of say basketball and futsal. So it's limited space, 40 meter by 20 meter in a futsal sized ground, handball sized ground if I may say.
Arjun Thomas: What are those?
Sunil: So we'll have to still work with what we have. But understand them to find out where the numbers are. We need numbers first. So without numbers, we cannot work. And 15 million is the world's largest blind population, Arjun. That's not easy to address. The government's focus is elsewhere, ⁓ basically getting wheelchair accessibility, election booth accessibility. Education more or less is digitized with a lot of accessibility laws that got passed.
Arjun Thomas: Right.
Sunil: with two bolts on either side. It's got these long side bolts on these runner bolts like the blocking the two long sides, rectangular sides and the ball is always in play. So there is no kick in throw in. So there's always a ricochet or a bounce off the board. And these are these four feet high bolts. We can't fall over them to run into them. Why? It's because the blind players to anchor their space, them safety because otherwise they'll have no runoff. They'll always be running everywhere across.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Alright.
Sunil: between 2008 to 2018. ⁓ were treaties signed globally because India became a signatory of it. We had to make digital accessibility part of it. Otherwise, there's zero as well. There's a lot of speeches and brokenism done, but there's zero. And the fight is within these individuals themselves. girl, God forbid something happens to you later in life. Because a lot of, right now we're finding a lot of age-related
Arjun Thomas: Yeah.
Sunil: This is actually guided for them and then the spectator finds out that if you were to go first time to a game, you'll be like, ⁓ my God, are these actually playing with, ⁓ how are they moving past each other? So when players approach each other, there's a word called boy, V-O-Y, it's ⁓ in Spanish Latin, which means I'm here. So assume you have a ball with you as you move forward or try and move past someone. ⁓ The person ⁓ coming towards you, approaching you says word called
Arjun Thomas: Right. Mm-hmm.
Sunil: ⁓ blindness to ⁓ diabetes. Diabetes is one of the world's largest killers and people become blind because of diabetic retinopathy, which is one of the options, one of the things that happens commonly. ⁓ And that's in our food, the food habits that we take. So ⁓ all this comes to one small point I wanted to bring to you that 75 to 80 % of blindness alone can be actually prevented. And we train them to place the hand forward, to understand where the player is coming from, try and stop the ball, take the ball away from him, dribble past and pass it on to your own player who's also shouting out to you. So there's a lot of sound based work that happens within each player's space. ⁓ We find out how they move in that, we teach them directions first of all. imagine like, you know, getting up and walking. That's massive. That's massive. That's where the pain...
Arjun Thomas: Right. And this is down to what? You're connecting back to diabetes? Is that one of the leading causes?
Sunil: We cannot move without banging into things. We find ⁓ that we communicate to them, understand their space and they're visually impaired but the blind by default have excellent sense of orientation. That's something that's within them. Over time, suppose you were to be born blind, you have better orientation than people who are late blind. So that we also found through these years. But then otherwise, the sense of hearing is sharp and ⁓ they're baldskins. That's most important.
Arjun Thomas: Right.
Sunil: No, not just that awareness during delivery, female has to take care of health, proper nutrition, avoid taking all these local medicines that they easily find, mostly in villages and things like that. We have a lot of cases of preventable blindness. That's the shock. When I say 75 % I'm not, it's not top of my hat that I'm giving this. If you just talk to the pharmacy and the doctors around.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Really?
Sunil: understanding dribbling cross-court. But one small difference is unlike regular football where your coaches or we have been taught in school saying pass the ball or this is where you actually need to look for your teammate and hook the ball, the ball, lock the ball to cross the ball, that doesn't happen. It's a lot of self-skills here. It's self-skills. You have to keep control of the ball, dribble past your own players. Of course you can pass the ball, but it's very difficult to find that player on this space because he or this loose boy, the angle of the shot should be good.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm.
Sunil: in developing countries. You'll find a lot of taboo because of this and they don't go to proper, they don't take proper care of their eyes and because of which you have a lot of other issues that come and that could also have multiple. We are also people who are blind and deaf. Out of the 15 million, seven percentages blind and deaf. Now there no football works, no accessibility works. It's all touch base and ⁓ tactile work only. So foot reflexology is one of the...
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Right. Hmm. Right.
Sunil: intuition that we will run forward. It's quite exciting. I know just one institute in India called Sense International, Ahmedabad, which takes care of the blind and deaf and that 7 % itself is, know, lot of people, 100,000, 200,000 people. So where are they? They're all hold up India houses. Sport one engine to bring them up. they can. So you see where I'm going. I'm trying to do that whole cycle of just getting them out to play. Playing for the country, scoring, winning a medal is a dream, which I'm still living.
Arjun Thomas: Wow. There's just so much for me to unpack because honestly more curiosity than anything else so so kind of bear with me as I'm trying to kind of unpack this having not witnessed this.
Sunil: Good
Arjun Thomas: ⁓ first hand. So what you're saying is one, the environment is set in a manner that is conducive to the format of play. One is ensuring that ambient noise is kept as low as possible. You have certain safety guards, which is these foam boards on the side to kind of prevent them from essentially running off and potentially hurting themselves. But then everything else is down to a lot of intuition, I guess, which is not only do you have to be aware of Mm. right. right.
Sunil: But ⁓ otherwise, my goal is to just get them all out, get them to be part of the mainstream, have a say in society, be independent. And if you can earn a living through whatever little bit of work that we as individuals or society can help you with, that's one option. But to wait for the government to take up this is going to be another generation.
Arjun Thomas: the fact that someone is coming towards you to say a voice at the right time. I think that itself is anticipating someone coming to you with a ball. The second is if you want to pass to someone else, you have to also hear for different voices, I guess, because there are 10 people with different voice and is that part of it tuning your mind to knowing which voice is who and where? So I want to double click on that, ⁓ which is you mentioned the fact that due to societal stigma, ⁓ people don't kind of step out. So you don't really know what the numbers are. So how did you...
Sunil: Because it's the size of the ground is fairly big. It's not as small as a basketball court. So you like a person who's standing as a in the defensive third. So the ground the ground is actually divided into three zones. So there's a goalkeeping zone where the goalkeeper can speak. The defenders of your team stands in front of you. You can speak. Obviously the attackers from the other team are also there. When the ball is in that zone, typically you speak. But there's a lot of chatter and noise. In the center is where the coaches zone.
Arjun Thomas: Right. Right. kind of connect with this group of people? If they're so difficult to connect with or don't want to be connected with, how do you kind of bridge that gap? Because the aspiration is a kind of a noble one, which is, you know, give them employment, their self-worth created as a result of that. Sports is a great way to build confidence on that journey to self-worth. But how do they find you? How do you kind of reach out to them? How do they reach out to you? Right. Right. Right.
Sunil: which is where the two coaches stand outside the ground, but then they can speak, communicate to the team also. Then there's the attacking zone, where the attackers stand and where the opponent's goalkeeper is. So where there's a goal guide who's behind the opponent's goal, guiding you. He's your team. He's like your eyes. So basically you have three people with eyes on the ground. is the goalkeeper because he's part of the team itself. And there's a coach on the sidelines, which is guiding you, the middle area. So this NGO, I mentioned, was the first platform. So we did a few radio talk shows. Radio is a huge option to reach out to the masses. TV still is tough. And right now, the internet. Before then, when I started, when we started in 2002, there was no internet access. Right now, it's all internet. You have internet radio. So even then. So radio still is one option. We do a lot of small, small camps, campaigns. We used to do eye clinics.
Arjun Thomas: right. Right. Right. Okay. Right. Right. Right, right. right.
Sunil: and the goal guy who's watching the play and as the attacker brings the ball, he keeps guiding you, shoot here, shoot there, dribble pass, come fast. There's a lot of sound that's created and hence the spectator for the first time is like, ⁓ my God, there's so much chaos, but how is he able to read through all this and understand where the goal is and shoot accurately and score a goal? That was something that has enthralled me throughout, even to date. ⁓ things like that attracted a lot of people got to know then this word of mouth so within the grapevine it travels fast because usually we have a lot of network between them say hey go to the center maybe they can help you maybe the football piece is something so on an average day I get about three calls at least across India I could be in Uttar Pradesh in Pakistan and not knowing but then my number is across
Arjun Thomas: Yeah. Really? Okay. Right. Wow. Right.
Sunil: when I see the team play and when people score for the country, my hair stands up. It's something that is unique in this. that's the enjoyment factor. That's the wow factor. And obviously you have to ⁓ respect these players. ⁓ there's immense respect for me. I was, I've been going through this for like you mentioned, 10 plus years. Now it's been 13 years. I stumbled on this game. these websites. So they pick it up, call. I speak bit of Hindi since I had my education in Delhi, so that helped me a bit. I try and tell them that, you know, it's okay. Don't give up. I may not be able to support you. But let me try and hook you onto something. So I try and do my best. Football may not for all. Football, have just a percentage of it. But that percentage itself, we have now more than 850 boys who play football and about 140 girls who play football. I have a database of about 1000 players in India.
Arjun Thomas: right.
Sunil: From that day, I'm still a child of the game. So I keep telling my players, you're doing something which I cannot do. And my time is, I feel well spent with you guys.
Arjun Thomas: That's active, but over the last 10-12 years, have you seen this kind of average increase year-on-year?
Sunil: Yes, because of word of mouth and the performance from the national team. So people know that if you get to the national team level, well you get a job or at least you know you can try for a job. So there's a lot of aspiration piece there and it's sport like I told Arjun, it's natural to everybody. We had a lot of barriers for them. Now since there's a proper setup in place, we get the ball, the kit, the boot, the goal fix, the mean the eye mask, proper protection, everybody wants to try it.
Arjun Thomas: So that's fascinating. want to kind of, ⁓ now that I've kind of roughly understood the format of how this operates, ⁓ it's a combination of obviously the innate... ⁓ I guess, echo location, ⁓ rudimentary term to use in this context, for a player to find themselves within the frame of the football pitch. And then you have the coach essentially guiding them through the middle section. And then it's essentially a handoff, if I can use that term loosely, to the visually sighted person on your team at the other side of the goal to kind of ⁓ close in. ⁓
Sunil: And so we now have even looking at sub juniors coming in. So there's no playbook for this. So everybody asks what do you use this? In England is different. In Argentina is different. In India is different. All of us talk to each other coaches, but there's no playbook. So we have just defined our own playbooks. We have made our own structure. We have broken India into five zones. It's a massive country like India. We are now looking at a sub junior level, or I should say a junior level.
Arjun Thomas: Right. right. The psychology of the individuals playing, and you touched upon it and I really want to talk about that. What goes through, and you've obviously talked to a lot of players over the years, what goes through their mind when they are charging down the field to get a goal? Because guess there's still adrenaline at play, it's difficult to suppress that. There's an intent to go kick that goal. You're obviously listening to a lot of this and you're trying to calibrate it, but the adrenaline, I'm guessing, is still high. ⁓
Sunil: because sub juniors is too small, they can't start. Ages 10, between ages 10 and 11 to 15 is one group and 15 onwards can play the senior level. So like in normal sport it would be 2 juniors to play but here 15 would come into the senior level because we have players who are 15 or quick who can give it a go so we don't want to stop them. But 10 to 15 we would still like to incubate them, tell them boys and girls especially, we give them a bit of training using smaller balls.
Arjun Thomas: Are they not worried about the environment, about crashing into someone else? Because it can be quite painful to use that term lightly.
Sunil: Absolutely. As I said, there's immense respect for them once they stepped into the ground. I even say that, you know, we only work with like in India, we work with the cream. I coach the Indian national team. But when I started off, there was a huge pool of players, which I still go to the grassroots. Like next month, I'm back again training the grassroots. So to get a blind player off a chair to come and play for them to boot up him or her to come into the game. That is success. The average size of a football is 5, we can get the smaller size 3 balls which has bensin set against and that is something that we... Japan does this. I noticed this in Japan. I was talking to the coach of Japan and the federation there, they... because we are all part of the same platform. We worked for this sport. So they were saying, no, so really it's left to how you want to do it. And from there we want to make sure that people play and maybe one out of say 20 comes into the national set daily. for me personally. mean, you have cracked something which I cannot do, which is you're going to hurt yourself day one. We had this instance in 2019 where we have never, India never had a blind women's team till 2019. There was a bunch of girls, we were playing in Bangalore at a men's national tournament and they came to see their brothers and their friends and all that. So then they came to me and said, sir, we would like to play a demo game. So I said, a demonstration game, women? And I will, I'm, We have 20 members in that team so far, boys and girls. We kind of work with these 20 to make sure that eight can come into the team. Only eight in the team by the
Arjun Thomas: You mentioned that the playbook evolves country to country because there is no set standard. Having talked to coaches over the years, what do you see is the big difference? You did earlier in our conversation highlight the fact that for certain countries, there is a lot of support. So keeping that aside, the financial and support aside, ⁓ what else have you of gleaned from these conversations? Like, what do you find that's similar?
Sunil: I always want to start women's football. So I always thought that Japan had it, Argentina had it in early 2012, etc. They used to have tournaments, but India never had a women's football. Because of factors beyond just football, it's difficult for them to come out and play, you know, society, parents, pressure, all that. So I just left it because I'm a men's coach. And there were these women who were fully decked up, like going to a mall or a movie, makeup, jewellery, nicely dressed.
Arjun Thomas: Is it the cultural backgrounds of the family backgrounds that people come from to these kind of football camps across the globe? And what are the things that you find that are different? Are there any patterns there?
Sunil: different from country to country. In India, almost everybody looks up to us because blindness in the West is coming down. In Japan, a couple of years ago before Covid, we travelled off to Japan because we were working with them. I was there just last month for the Asian Championships also. They pulled me in from wherever we were. an attend this seminar kind of thing. It's in English, so you will enjoy it. Great. So I go there. The entire seminar. I said, you're going to I said, yes, we have the shorts and the kit with our bag. We'll borrow the boots. Can we jump into the ground? I said, no. This was in Bangalore. So there were some people from the northeastern part of India, plus some local people. And I said, but always in me, wanted them to play. The security feeling was something that I couldn't envision. In 2019, I spoke to them.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Like right there. Like right there. Wow. Wow.
Sunil: They said, no sir, we know the rules. So we are well versed with what the playing football rules are. We know we're going to hurt each other. ⁓ We may crash in, we may score a goal, whatever, but let's give it a shot. I was like, wow. I love this spirit. And this is what I want. Got them booted up, spoke to them for 20 odd minutes, asked them to protect themselves because my first intention is to keep them safe. Forget anything else. Just safe, but enjoy it. is talking about how to encourage people who may go blind to play football. Because the pool of players they have is just about 30 players. ⁓
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Wow, so they're struggling to get people because they have so few that are blind. That's a good problem to have.
Sunil: Same problem in England, good problem. It's a problem with most of the developing countries or developed countries. ⁓ Similar problem in Singapore and ⁓ in England, in Germany, same problems exist in most of Europe. But in other countries, South America, they are like us. So the coaches enjoy, they understand the struggle that I go through. Brazil and Argentina are supported by their federations, national federations and the government, so they are sorted. taught them the basics in whatever little way I could, 20 odd minutes. They brought these gold fix over their makeups, took off all their jewelry, properly kitted, tried to get them as safe as possible with shin guards, bags, all that. Jumped into the ground. We played 15 minutes, maybe about 20 minutes, 10 minutes each. There was a goal in that game. There was a goal in that game. One of the girls scored a goal against a sighted goalkeeper who's a woman also. Also Brazil has been the Olympic champions in blindfold. What you the Paralympics we go to for the last five years from the time we started. So they have enough support. Argentina still struggles, but they're world number one. So they have a very good women's set up. It started about 15 years ago. They're world champions also. So the coach is quite close to me. So he asked me about the girls. How do the Indian girls come out? We know it's quite difficult out for you. But I say this is the same. What you go through is the struggle that we go through.
Arjun Thomas: right. Wow. Right.
Sunil: They all are so happy. And that gave me an idea like, okay, this is something which is in them and I cannot stop this. I should not be a person to stop this. Fast forward, we are fully fledged. We have a fully fledged Indian National Women's Team. We have number four in the world, number two in Asia. And we have qualified for the next World Cup in 2027, which is massive. In India, women's sport is still fledgling.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Wow.
Sunil: They have convince parents, family, teachers to send the ⁓ kids out. We had a case where, you know, one of our tournaments, the teacher told the parent to send the books to the coach. So the coach ended up teaching the kid while she's playing for India. I had to make sure that she was studying in a hotel room post. She was 15 years old. I'm blameful. And in India, I know that. ⁓ I can't give her living out of this. I can't promise her the life. But I know that Indian women's football is better than the men's football on ranking. But blind women playing has just taken. And then we have a young person who's 13 who scored for India. We have girls, but the turn is a bit more than the men's. Girls come and play, try, leave, society, other issues, marriage, beyond me. But ⁓ we had a women's coach. I still try and coach the women's team.
Arjun Thomas: Right.
Sunil: Today she's playing with us. It's fine. But then a lot of other circumstances. yeah, to this really short, each federation works on its own. ⁓ But we learn a lot from each other. We have forums, platforms we talk to. And it's all about learning and understanding and caring. Because ⁓ in South Asia, we have noticed, India is probably the one country that has taken this on full on. And we are quite popular in the region. We train people from Nama Maldives.
Arjun Thomas: Right. great. Ahem.
Sunil: So that's it.
Arjun Thomas: What surprised you most? mean there's obviously no shortage of things that should surprise you when you started this. But what's the one thing that's ⁓ stuck with you in the last 10-13 years that you keep going back to and saying wow?
Sunil: Nepal, so this is kind of an anchor for most of South Asia. ⁓ In countries where culturally it's difficult to come out and play, like in Indonesia or Iran, in the Middle East, families don't support especially women coming forward. That's another one we want to tackle slowly by encouraging girls to come out and play in different areas, like in schools, colleges, wherever they can, just knock the ball and we give them a... ⁓ For me, the couple of things actually, not just one. The wishly impaired, ⁓ not all of them can play football. They love to have sedentary sports. Because it's a hard thing to get around the move in the first place. You don't know where the stair is, the box is. Imagine you're running full speed into each other's wheels. You need to have total courage grit. ⁓ The dire need to do this to prove yourself and to prove to people around you that hunger.
Arjun Thomas: You Right.
Sunil: And for that, the International Committee for Blind Football, which is like a FIFA body, parallel, but much smaller. In Europe, it's supported by UEFA, by the way. In Asia, we still don't have AFC with us. We're hoping that AFC comes on board. But there's huge funding and international body is trying to support this. So the supply of kit, balls, etc. Any of these sprinter organizations, like in Japan, they form this separate body. Just imagine that there's a proper blind football body like us, Blind Football Federation.
Arjun Thomas: right. You're right.
Sunil: should be there. Then of course, the third thing is I play a little bit of soccer. I'm not a professional, but I just play on the weekends and just play for my school called it out. But these skills, when I'm talking to a person who's not moved to invite that skill, so you're very raw to absorb it. So a lot of football coaches come to me saying they've got the D license, E license, C license from UFR to AFC. But then I said, no, we don't need any license. We need a football.
Arjun Thomas: Right. Hmm.
Sunil: Japan Blind Football Association. Then they formed a separate foundation for blind football, well funded from Ajinomoto, Nissan, Mitsubishi. There's no lack of sponsors. that foundation's work is to promote blind football across Asia. We work closely with them. They cover games, which is great. Broadcasting games is number one. As long as you and me can watch it at home, you can also pick up the game and, know, encourage your kids to know about it. Maybe you can get a blind person who's a neighbor of yours to come forward. So broadcasting, creating awareness. call understanding coach who can work with the blind, who can work with the specially ill. Forget any level of license. that's how it is. We kind of reverse engineer it to what we need. So a lot of people said, hey, you know, can we do some licensing and then we can come to you? We said, as long as you have the heart. And first thing is you have to work with the treatment. So that's different from like, I'm just trying to say how it's different from the space. And I also feel that my own way of, you know,
Arjun Thomas: you Right.
Sunil: is the number one goal for different organizations like us on India also. But how we do it? There's no playful culture. It's quite wild. Thailand, for example, was struggling when I started knowing in 2013, they were struggling like us. But the Thai army picked it up. And there is a lot of state support there. When we go there, it's the army bus which picks us from the airport to their center. The army major search colonels are on the board. They follow the game.
Arjun Thomas: rate.
Sunil: I look at these guys with, when I play to date, I've probably coached more than 100 games for India. But every day I, ⁓ when I meet the team before a game, ⁓ I still say...
Arjun Thomas: Hmm.
Sunil: You need to respect the opponent. You need to first understand. then I am still a learner. I could make mistakes. But they all look at me like, you cannot do anything wrong. You have to guide us through the whole thing. But then I enjoy the fact that I still learn, since you asked me what I take out of it. I still learn a lot. I stay grounded, I think. It builds the teamwork, discipline, a lot of self-respect.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm.
Sunil: Last week in Japan, last month in Japan, I was sitting up with most of them. They come in civilian clothes. It's not that they're fully decked up like generals, but there is a lot of state support through that. So we are hoping that countries find their way around. I cannot speak for any specific reason. And I'm fighting for my own country's sake. So we'll have to find a way to work this out. And it's a problem because so, ⁓ Paraspotin in general is a struggle, except in the West.
Arjun Thomas: Ahem.
Sunil: for these players coming into that. And I know that most of them will take this beyond football, just beyond the football ground to the rest of their lives. It just happened also. People who have not been confident have come to the ground. have enough and more testimonials from people who have just gone on to make things happen for the rest of their lives, including jobs and marriage and success in life. It's beyond football. That's our intent. That's the goal of this whole project. Not many countries in the world...
Arjun Thomas: right. Is it a function of one, because in a country like India, most people say, cricket kind of sucks the oxygen out, generally speaking, when it comes to sports. And then you have even for the, I guess, the regularly abled sports struggle already. Hmm.
Sunil: Lot of people have huge funding, well funded coaches, but the intent is to just grow blind football for them. Or for the Indian Blind Football Federation, our intent is to grow the blind footballer. That's my takeaway. So every day I'm interested to help them in a little bit, but there have been ups and downs. that's normal in any sort of.
Arjun Thomas: And then to kind of look at differently abled, it falls like three rungs down in terms of a priority banking order. So ⁓ have you seen like in Japan, ⁓ corporates in India kind of stepping in to say, hey, this is something that we think is worth supporting either through CSR initiatives or the like? Hmm. Hmm.
Sunil: so far. The quick answer is again not so far, but we're hoping and we're keeping on working towards that. When I started in 2013, there was nothing. I had to fundraise to friends, family to get even footballs in. Like we never had a ball, like the ball is a defined ball. I had to import it from England to start. To now, we make balls in India in Jalandhar, Punjab and export it.
Arjun Thomas: So I want to pick on what you just mentioned, is clearly your motivation given that you started this from, honestly nothing, was a wish and a prayer initially, ⁓ is driven in large part because you want... right. right. Hmm. Wow, that's unbelievable. And that was as a result of a local supply through ⁓ the IBFF and then demand surged and then now you kind of supply. these individuals to be the best versions of themselves and football is a vehicle to get them there and clearly that comes across. You also mentioned that doesn't seem to be the case ⁓ with a lot of other countries and I do understand that sports is highly competitive keeping aside the specially abled nature of blind football but
Sunil: So, yes. So I went on a campaign about pre-COVID around COVID time that one ball per person. So you imagine straight away thousand balls. I to a couple of companies, one picked it up in Jalandhar. They make Puma balls across the export. So that area Lahore, Haisalabad, Jalandhar area in North India and Pakistan is the world's ball manufacturer. I said along with your regular footballs for Puma.
Arjun Thomas: rate. Right. Why do you think you have a different take than at least all the other countries that you've seen trying to get blind football off the ground and kind of scale it up? Is it because who you are? like, why do you think there's a difference? Hmm.
Sunil: Yeah. trying to do this so they came out with a very crude version which was not working because the ball has to be specific weight and size because only then can we over time maybe about five iterations they got it right then I'm part of a I used to part of a world committee for blind football so I immediately pitched this there they were like wow we can use this for training Japan imported those balls from India for training so we supply to Oman Japan I must say quick answer is partly but otherwise the broad answer is most of the countries across like if you look at the West and even in the highly developed countries in Asia, Japan, China, the Koreas Singapore unfortunately doesn't have a team yet but it's around and Thailand there's a lot of support that comes from the state, the government Thailand has the support from the army this is just the Asia. In the West, you look at ⁓ England, the England FA
Arjun Thomas: Wow. Wow. Right. It's nice to hear an Indian manufacturing story. ⁓
Sunil: This is a Make in India campaign which India needs to at least take up on a big level. It's not my job, but it's a contact of mine. She's very happy to support us. She helps us with our kids also. The Indian National Blind Football Kids are that company, called Vectrex. And happy to say that they have been supporting us wholeheartedly. And then we use them for training and we use them at tournaments, for national tournaments. But we want to get it to an international level. Internationally still, Denmark, which is again Pakistan, funds the entire Blind Football Project which is four million quid funding. They have a fully trained facility. They train at their FA Centre at St George Park in New Birmingham where the England national team goes, the national coach goes. they have, we play there and my good friend is the technical assistant coach for India. helps out. He's a former England international. He's blind.
Arjun Thomas: well. Right. Right.
Sunil: And one more country, Spain, manufactures these balls. So there's a world, like it's it's a World Cup kind of defined ball where you have to use a certain quality, the material, et cetera. We need to get there. When I say we need to get there, India needs to do that. So I'm pushing for that. But there's this one part of it. I'm not involved in the manufacture piece hardcore. I'm focused on the blind. So if the government wants to take it and do it in a large scale, it's their thing. We have given them on a plate, on a platter.
Arjun Thomas: Sorry.
Sunil: So what I also do is I pick the best blind people to also coach. The way they think, I love to know them, how they think. And I also use the Indian internationals who played earlier for India, I mean blind only. And I say Indian internationals, I only work with those here. So the blind people, use them to understand how they play the game, what do they think about, how they move and think like So that helps me also. So in England, well funded, Germany well funded, France well funded. over time improved, I traded. But still we hosted six international tournaments including the last World Cup for women in India. that's where my, I'm just going to answer your question of Sir, having a World Cup in India, no women's football World Cup has ever been hosted in India. There was an under 17 men, but for a full thing, ⁓ we wrote a sports ministry, it took us six months to get permission to get all the teams in, but they never asked us how we're getting funding. I was told Argentinian national football team works with the AFA where Messi is. And there was an instance where one of the footballers said, know, play footballers, said, you know, we will win this Copa. There was a Copa America. And we hope to see Messi. And Messi was, came to the OPS conference long back. So this is the level of funding support state owned work that happens. In India.
Arjun Thomas: Voila. Hmm.
Sunil: Or when we asked for funding, said, that's your headache. So we finally had to, ⁓ because of the World Cup, most of teams pay to stay. We use the hotel's but otherwise the running costs operations were all ours. ⁓ Because of Sureshwar, we managed it. And we've so far done six tournaments in India, mostly in Pochi, Kerala, where I'm based. We have three good grounds here. Again, friends of mine own the ground. I'm ⁓ requesting them to give us space. Obviously pay for...
Arjun Thomas: Hmm.
Sunil: Being differently abled is a huge challenge. being missionary. If you were to, God forbid, have a problem in the family or something happens to you down in your career or in like, whatever, freak accident, get turned like. The government is not even aware of that. They don't have numbers. They don't have stats. So ⁓ if I was to go differently abled tomorrow, I am nowhere in this scenario. I fight for my self. In 2000, so there's a backdrop to Blank Mode. Why I am also here.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Right.
Sunil: our subsidized cost. Similarly, we opened up grounds in Ahmedabad, Shillong, Delhi. So we have covered most of it. Next week, we are in Delhi for our Asian Paragon Nagoya selection. That's coming up in October. That's our next big project. That's under the central government of India. So thankfully, we don't have to fundraise. So the government, if they wish to say... We are number five in Asia, and only 16 come from Asia. We technically qualified. need to... My work started primarily because way of giving back to the wish-leaved bed. was in college, nobody in my family is wish-leaved bed, nobody in my family has ever gone through anything. Luckily, it touched me today. But I used to commit a bit of my time during my college days, 30 odd years ago, into just society, contributing voluntary. Go and look at the zoo. I was in Delhi for a while, so I studied my entire education was in Delhi. That gave me a little exposure. Slum cleaning, zoo. ⁓
Arjun Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.
Sunil: jump into rankings. So the question from the government is always, are you worthy of a medal? And medal is only top three. But it's like you have reservations made for, you know, SCSTs and all that in India, but then in sport, where is your reservation to bring the grassroot up? You're only talking about the two, three people who will win the medal always. So I think it's totally warped sports policy. we did forestation drives. Then I was also in touch with couple of visually impaired for whom I read. So I used to do the book reading. So earlier there was no software like what's there right now, which was accessibility. So there was no concept called accessibility. You have to basically have a scribe or a person read it. So that's how they'll memorize this and then they would go to an exam, take you as a scribe. That scribe is a person who writes for you, still exists. Because India is still trying to rework that system. It's not there in the West.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. Right. Great. Hmm.
Sunil: to date, it's improved over time. mean, from 13 to now, if I say over 13 years, it's moved much better than ever, but a lot of gaps, especially there are these athletes, I'm not taking blind football, I'm just saying regular athletes also who lack support for the corporates and all that. There are four corporates who, I mean, three or four corporates who come forward, Adani, JSW Steel, there's a Gurukappa group who support, et cetera, but still there's a lot to and he said, you don't know that because he was all online and the scribe writes the example. I was like blown away with the simple fact that this guy has memorized hundred odd pages that I would just take maybe months to read to you and he's memorized these hundred pages and he's giving you these answers which are just like T or S 10 O writing that, that's it. But his mind is wired in such a way that is he's so good with this. That's my first exposure to being ever working with him, about 30 odd years.
Arjun Thomas: Huh.
Sunil: And we need more focus. I'm not naming that Begumoth sport you mentioned, but that gets all the views. 99 % of everybody aspires to become a cricketer. That's the only way you can earn a living. Probably one person wants to become a Kabaddi player because right now you have a Kabaddi league. But the national sport of India is something called hockey, which has died its own death. I came and started my own company. That's what I have, a small company of my own. I my own business. And I thought what are these guys doing early 2000s? What are these guys? Because then the computer wave was on in India and the West. was jobs. Then these guys would not be able to match that. They were all memorizing and pen on paper times were happening with scribes. Where will this gap be filled? But then quickly I realized there's software that can be done with this. So then stumbled on a couple of things. Found out there's an Indian wordnacless software. Made in IIT Chennai.
Arjun Thomas: rate. Hmm. up the leaks here.
Sunil: We had tried leagues. I follow all the games. So follow football India football India. We are one 27th rank in the world. I speak to a couple of the national team players. They're fighting their own fight. When I write to them, they feel that oh man, this guy is coming for money. I said, no, I don't want any money. Your technical and expert means will help us a bit. All those unused grounds you give us for one hour a month, one hour a week, we can use them in Rajasthan to visit around. We don't have to then own a ground. So we now And then I was very curious to get that going and formed an NGO with my colleague MC Roy who still date my good friend and my colleague at my NGO in 2002. So we started an NGO first. That NGO to date has one of the projects is blind football support and that we branched out in 2013 as separate. In 2002 there was music for the Vishnu friend. We started a professional band which we thought should
Arjun Thomas: ⁓ wow, a long time ago. Right.
Sunil: Now we're using that model where we use existing spaces. Earlier we had plans to buy space and make, that's gone. It's a waste. We can't run it. Neither the blind are interested to run. We had another idea where blind can become entrepreneurs of these football grounds and make money. But this huge high investment. So we started working on smaller ones. So where they can actually plug themselves. But the goal always is rehabilitation. Like that's the thinking that's different from like, again, go back to the full cycle. Not many countries in the world are bothered about what happens to the blind player after he plays it.
Arjun Thomas: rate.
Sunil: make money, travel and make money. Not everybody can actually type in, you know, find jobs in vernacular spaces or desk based jobs. Music was a good opportunity because lot of the blind schools across India were focused on actually training for learning instruments. By default, the machine bed, hear stuff, you would also seen a bit of exposure where they would have been singing at different hotspots. But then we thought let's make a professional orchestra. To date, the orchestra still exists. It's called Heart to Heart Orchestra.
Arjun Thomas: Right.
Sunil: We hand-hold them before and they hand-hold them after. So there are jokes that go around in India because you have these arranged marriages. Even IBFF will get me married. So that's the joke. played more than 500 shows across, taken them across India, taken them to the Middle East, not to the Far East yet, but maybe someday South Asia yet, but sometime. And we started looking at shows across which can be, so people are respecting them for their performances, not because they are visually impaired. So we have a keyboard, Easter, we mostly Easter band and singers also. So that's been happening and three people work now in a hospital
Arjun Thomas: ⁓ Well, given that it's on the top of a lot of people's minds, I don't think that's a bad place to be, at least from a value-aspiration point of view. ⁓
Sunil: Yes. yeah, but that's how India is. Once you show them the way out like a carrot, you become their life. and it becomes difficult when you are not fully, this is not my life. I have my own business to run. I take away lot of it from here, but there's no revenue or commercial interests at all for me. That I make it clear.
Arjun Thomas: right.
Sunil: That's the day one. And that's where most of the corporates look at it. People will understand with a lot of respect. Like, hey, here is a group of individuals or here is something that's different from the other federations where they don't take any... There's no commercial return. Why are they involved? The government, like usual, skeptical. They want to have... I'm not saying more about it, but they want to have a full control of things, politicize it. We are totally not there. So that allows us to stay away, but also be different.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. I want to this as an opportunity to pull the thread on the door that you opened out, which is ⁓ more than guess regular sports where there are human interest stories. Here I think... ⁓ There's a lot more to unpack for every single player I'm sure that comes in through the Bryan Football League. ⁓ Everyone has a story. Everyone has not just, I'm guessing, ⁓ the physical barriers to overcome, there is cultural. So what are the, and I'm sure there are, you said a thousand, players in the league, I'm sure you have thousand stories, but which are the ones that kind of stick with you and keep coming back when people ask you about who are your players, why are they playing, what have they overcome to get to your field, what are the ones that can come to mind, who are the ones that come to mind, sorry not what are the ones.
Sunil: We had several Arjunais. We need a whole forecast on that. So movies, we tried to make one or two small movies out of that. So it's on our website and done by our friends actually. So one or two have done really well also. But there are maybe two I can speak out here. One is 2016, we had a player come to one of our national tournaments. we have the structure in India we made again.
Arjun Thomas: I figured, I figured.
Sunil: Zero playbook we made. ⁓ Blind school, blind colleges, go there, do camps. From there, find out organizations who can form a formal body. ⁓ District level, state level. At state level, you have a training camp for all the different blind schools that work with you. At that time, we can't call each blind school in that state. So there are 148 blind schools in India, 14 in Kerala, mass number, not coordinated by anybody, nothing. Whoever can form this organization, register with us. We call you for state level tournaments and zonal tournaments. In the zonal tournament, if you do top three in that zone, so like I said, India has been divided into five zones, the top two from that zone and a best-placed third team comes to our national tournament. That's the best structure. We're that from the last eight years, years. We just work successfully. We bring the best players that way. Yes, you may be one player who's never played any of these and think that you can't be in the national team, you cannot.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm.
Sunil: you have to play and then climb. So at the national level, we had this team from Meghalaya once come in 2016. We were starting, we were also learning. So there was this very strong boy, he was quite, I mean, he was rough in his game. But I noticed him and 2017 I go back to Meghalaya, it's on the Bangladesh border. Sorry, Bangladesh border, a place called Toora. So I'm in a school called Mountford school and I'm asking the principal who runs the school. said, we have about 400 kids. Out of that, think 40 are blind. Because he's focused on that. I loved it. And then I said, yeah, but I know one team and one player who came from here, guy, killing and then he said, ha, killing. He looks around, this guy is on a jackfruit tree. He comes down with the heavy jackfruit on his and he falls down. And he's got the jackfruit also down. He's having a good time. To cut the story short, I asked this principal, like, what does he do? No, he's in seventh standard.
Arjun Thomas: 10 % my god Hmm.
Sunil: He's about mid-20s, but he's 27th standard. I said, we had an academy started in 2017. I didn't mention that, but there was a, it does only para sport academy. We started it in 2017. We ran it till COVID. But then post COVID, we changed the trajectory to it. Now we run only the national camps at that center. We have a full place. So, in 2017, we brought him, worked with us. Found out that, again, parents have split. He stayed in the hostel.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Great.
Sunil: doesn't have many people around. Became like a strong boy. We go in 2018 to Japan to play in Japan in the month of March. It's sleet and snow. Local conditions for them favorable. They are having a ball. We have got no jackets. We have gone in sweatshirts, freezing. We play this game. He scores for India and beats a Japan B-team. 1-0. It's never happened. The Indian embassy there...
Arjun Thomas: Enjoy.
Sunil: Two people I had requested through email to come and watch it. In the snow they watched it. They were like, holy. They were like blown away. were like, what is this? You have beaten a local team. It's like a powerhouse for football in across every sport. An Indian team plays Japan, you lose 10-0. An Indian men's team lost 12-0 last
Arjun Thomas: Hmm.
Sunil: 9-0. ⁓ So Japan is a power. We beat them locally. These guys were like bloated. To date, the Indian embassy there, we are in touch with. This guy comes back and then I understand that he's... ⁓ So, over through time, he's been with us. Doesn't have parents. Stayed in the school. Never went back. Continue to stay in our center. Continue to play. ⁓ He's got three hat-tricks for India. He's now married with a child. Every tournament I write a nice letter. My letters carry weight. That's free and it's good because I have the coach and the director of the federation. He used to take these letters to the local body and get money from there. And now last month I hear he's building a house for his aunt and his family. he's like the village there has I think named a road after him. It's like a hero.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Wow! From the boy who fell off a jackfruit tree to having no road named after him.
Sunil: played 40 odd games for India, scored last month. Senior most player to date, is the captain of India. Amazing story. Again, I said I will take two, I will not speak more. There was this girl who came to us when she was 12. 12, not her. I said it's difficult, we are traveling to the first World Cup for India in Birmingham, UK. colleague of mine said no, no, There was this girl who came to us when she was 12. 12, not her. I said it's difficult, we are traveling to the first World Cup for India in Birmingham, UK. colleague of mine said no, no, difficult but she's a strong player but got a good shot in her I said let's We go to Birmingham land and we had booked our return tickets after the league. India has never played blind football women's and I said every day in Birmingham was a big amount so we didn't want to spend more than the required days. colleague of mine me landed in Birmingham and I said after the league phase India can come back so we booked our emmits return ticket. India was with Argentina difficult but she's a strong player but got a good shot in her I said let's We go to Birmingham land and we had booked our return tickets after the league. India has never played blind football women's and I said every day in Birmingham was a big amount so we didn't want to spend more than the required days. colleague of mine me landed in Birmingham and I said after the league phase India can come back so we booked our emmits return ticket. India was with Argentina Austria and Germany and the fourth team was Four powerhouses. Well-quoted powerhouses on paper. First game, India versus Austria. We beat Austria 1-0. This 13-year-old scores for India. We beat Austria. India has arrived. We played Germany 0-0. I didn't heard. They start... Argentina beat us. Austria and Germany and the fourth team was Four powerhouses. Well-quoted powerhouses on paper. First game, India versus Austria. We beat Austria 1-0. This 13-year-old scores for India. We beat Austria. India has arrived. We played Germany 0-0. I didn't heard. They start... Argentina beat us.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Well funded teams. Three well funded teams. Right. Wow.
Sunil: There another league but we cut the story shot we went to the semi-final and we lost this semi-final with Japan. It was 0-0. We took seven penalty shots and we unfortunately lost in ⁓ Went to the third place game again 0-0 with Sweden. Nadar Pahos we lost at the semis but in the penalty shooter. We didn't win a medal but There another league but we cut the story shot we went to the semi-final and we lost this semi-final with Japan. It was 0-0. We took seven penalty shots and we unfortunately lost in ⁓ Went to the third place game again 0-0 with Sweden. Nadar Pahos we lost at the semis but in the penalty shooter. We didn't win a medal but
Arjun Thomas: My god. But getting to the penalty shows that that self says a lot.
Sunil: She was 13 and ⁓ it's just mind blowing to know that how she works. Like I cannot imagine as 13 year old thinking the way she did. She's she once with the blind person. I will not care. I am 13 your whatever size which is short as fast as shoulder height. But I will fight for you. I will die for you sir. That's it. She was 13 and ⁓ it's just mind blowing to know that how she works. Like I cannot imagine as 13 year old thinking the way she did. She's she once with the blind person. I will not care. I am 13 your whatever size which is short as fast as shoulder height. But I will fight for you. I will die for you sir. That's it. And ⁓ she her dad runs a small cafe in Uttarakhand.
Arjun Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Sunil: I give these beautiful letters to everybody. I get a request from the sports ministry of India. First time they called. ⁓ you went to Birmingham. ⁓ how was it? I said, okay. What's happening? We have a request from the Uttarakhand government. It's a supporting letter. As coach, can you give this letter for the girl who played? I was like, wow. What's Akshara, name?
Arjun Thomas: Okay.
Sunil: which has been nominated for the Prime Minister's Youth Award for sport. I said, of course, gave a beautiful answer to make it. I think she came top three, but only one won it. But that has helped ⁓ a lot of girls also come through the whole structure. I mean, most of these girls have a story. So it's been difficult for them. Most of them have come through, ⁓ especially for the women.
Arjun Thomas: ⁓ my god, wow. rate.
Sunil: football to take off to the level we have done is something that I really am really acting God because that wouldn't have happened without a lot of others support and but interestingly ⁓ we know that like since you made the touch on corporates I must say the corporates look at this as a catch like women, football, blind you pick a lot of boxes and so what we now think is
Arjun Thomas: Yeah.
Sunil: confederation strategy, we now need to focus more on the women's side so that the men also build up. That's what happened last month. We focused on the women because Indian women had a chance to go to the World Cup 27. And with that, ran a whole campaign from last December. we have a crowdfunding every rupee, penny, everything. And so the men also got a chance to go to Japan last month. And both the teams thankfully have qualified for World
Arjun Thomas: Right. Hmm.
Sunil: which we will know for sure by the end of the year based on rankings. were only, so one team gets to qualify because they are the top team, but the rest of it, because we played and got to a certain level, finals and semi-finals, we should hopefully be in the World Cup next year, which becomes the first ever men or women's football teams, forget para, normal also to qualify on merit to a World Cup. We will play hopefully in in 2027 October.
Arjun Thomas: That's unbelievable. I mean...
Sunil: Now that's all great to talk to but I have to get to the team to the World Cup now is a challenge. So I am using all sorts of platforms like yours to talk about it. Hopefully get some interest from the contest because we have enough time and I want, I just don't want them to just play. I want them to play on the podium, you know, and there's a good chance that the Indian women's has a chance to also qualify for the Brisbane 2032 Paralympics. And that's historical because in no para team has qualified from India, qualified to get the win.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm.
Sunil: It's all individuals who go from India to ⁓ the Paralympics and do well. They do well. They do pretty well. 22 medals, all of their work. It's not because of any Federation backing it. They just sign letters and say like, they give it to us, gold play here, gold play there, but they don't find out how we go. What is the pain behind it? So all these 22 medals that India won ⁓ in Paris last time, Paralympics, are all the individual effort and hats off to them. And I'm hoping that India, Indian women's becomes the first.
Arjun Thomas: All individual.
Sunil: para team officially to qualify and do well in 2032 if I'm there till then.
Arjun Thomas: Right. ⁓ fingers crossed. That would be kind of monumental.
Sunil: and more than that, the rest of it that follows like society, support, ⁓ the level of how people recognize them, jobs, I think that will open up a lot, it will open up those to a lot of others. Not just in blind football, I feel that para sport requires a movement like this. So my pitch to all the other coppers, I told them it's not for blind football that I'm pitching, I'm pitching for para sport. And they understand, they're like, we try and do what we can, but my focus is this. I can't say, I can't do anything for everybody.
Arjun Thomas: Right. And in terms of media... how do they cover this sector or do they cover this sector at all based on your 10 over 13 years kind of doing this.
Sunil: less, less quick answers again, very less, much more can be done. But we do get support from the local medias when we travel, like if you go to the northeast of India, like if you play in say Guwahati, there's some interest from the media, there's a wow factor like this. But there's no dedicated channel to cover this. We haven't got this on mainstream TV, but we don't need it. Like we get a lot of web and YouTube coverage. think TV-wise we are sorted because people who want to see us, Google and find us. So that is it.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. They find you.
Sunil: But we would love to have mainstream print as well as blogs and rest of the influence of media come and cover it a bit more. That would be amazing. Especially because we have taken it to a point that we can take it. We have get our spaces in radio shows, ⁓ talk shows. I was interviewed by Lino Saka. I was interviewed by a radio channel in Kerala. So I gave a piece of what I thought was relevant. So all that is happening. But I want the players to speak more from where they are. So today if a media channel comes and tells us say, what do you want from us? I will point them to all the players wherever they are. Please meet them, get a story on them, encourage them and that opens up rules. So that would be one pitch up. And then you need constant viewership, constant support. Like if you play once in a year, then you forget you.
Arjun Thomas: Right. Great. Correct. Attention span is very, very short.
Sunil: the memory span we want something like that and down the line I feel all our efforts will lead to that we don't want to give up we keep speaking to a lot of people but mainstream media is yet to fully cover we have done our bit getting celebrities getting people to endorse it so what we typically do is in these kick-offs for the World Cup especially we had a blind celebrity come blind fold and then kick-off we had five judges from the local high-growth companies, players between themselves. They take a penalty blindfolded. So the post when you're blindfolded is difficult to score into. So get the outline of the post, and we tap the post, and then they kick it in there. So lot of interesting pieces that way to communicate the message. But I feel that you still need a lot of work. Because the media is interested to do the other work, which I'm not mentioning, the mainstream politicized work. But we need a lot of that.
Arjun Thomas: Yeah.
Sunil: And that is the same across sports. I'm not blaming just playing football. Across para sport and across most of the sports other than that 99 % viewership. So that is a challenge. You don't hear about anything else. You only listen to one media.
Arjun Thomas: Overall, your feeling of or the trajectory of where you see blind football seems to be rather positive. mean, a lot of it is down to the work that you and your team are doing, obviously, and it seems to be hopefully touchwood resulting in positive outcomes. But generally, are you more positive about the trajectory of where blind football is going in the country?
Sunil: Yes, ⁓ would love to take it a little forward with some of our ideas, get more partnerships in and more like many people on board. So if you ask me where the problem is, we don't have a lot. I can't do this for the rest of my life. hope I don't do this for the rest of my life. But even if I need to, I will do it. But I need more people to help and take this up. Because the moment you open it up, you have people have told me you have to go commercial.
Arjun Thomas: Okay.
Sunil: Only then can you get, you know, your pay to get quality guys. We're happy to do that. We never said no. My mantra is my mantra. I don't want to take money. That's my call, but I can't sell everybody. So if we get good partnerships on board and if we get corporate support, definitely we'd to have like-minded people on board and build it up like a small VCCF. The other federations I don't want to name, but some, professionalism companies to come in and focus on what we can. I can do X like ground level work.
Arjun Thomas: Right.
Sunil: training, the rest of the admin piece, commercialization, promotion, all the other pieces. If someone else can do that, nothing to But we feel that these small, small achievements, ranking, worker participation, growth numbers that we portray opens up a few more groups. Otherwise there's nothing to show. Like most of the blind football stopped in some countries. Like that's unfortunate. We had, when I came in, there were 40 countries. Now it's just 68 countries that play. But even the challenge that I keep bouncing off because the main body members, president and the potatoes are our good friends of mine. The challenge we have is to grow the game. So they keep saying, if you can call in a Nepal team in, we call in the Sri Lanka, a guys in Maldives. All these are flight away for us, where we are. So it's an hour already. You bring them for camps, increase them to play. We don't want this to stop at this level. We need to add more countries to play. But as such, mind is always grown. And the women's, like I mentioned,
Arjun Thomas: Right. Right.
Sunil: It's going to grow only for 16 teams play in women just one six, but by Brisbane 32 we are expecting at least 32 teams to play. So that will be the, that's the game. 20-32 Brisbane, women's 32 and hopefully India becomes qualifies on merit. that's a beautiful story. 32 teams is a challenge and that's the, especially in Africa. must say, blind football is stagnant. Few countries only. Morocco is like top.
Arjun Thomas: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Sunil: 5 in the world but beyond Morocco, Egypt, Ivory Coast and maybe one or two countries, Cameroon etc very few people have got a structure in place. This is not their focus. Their focus is livelihood and living. So, black football can be an option to come forward. We found that because we have people who travel that side in Uganda, Zimbabwe especially. A lot of people take up
Arjun Thomas: Right.
Sunil: We had places where in India and across like these countries where people just, know, they take these deflated balls which don't work anymore, put plastic bags around it and run. You see that? The most crudest way. had boys do that. Before we came to Meghalaya in 2017, had kids, we would see plastic bottles, these water bottles with sand pebbles inside, take that. You have all these ways to just get rolling with that. Then we come in with the footballs and then they are...
Arjun Thomas: Hmm. De here.
Sunil: much more. So a ball in India, no cost off Amazon or Flipkart, $10, $8. You don't need to get a international ball now. I said, so it's just a click away. Like I keep saying, if you find a person to buy and support you with a ball, just do that. But again, after that, what happens? You need to like work together with society, operates. And there's a huge other piece that I wanted to highlight also. contributing back like know, cadaver donors like eye donation. ⁓ India still imports quaternayers from a tiny country called Sri Lanka. For me, I must say it is a joke. We have only 28,000 deaths in India a day. 28,000. For all reasons. We're not expecting even one person of that to contribute. But religion, society, all needs to open up. Not just eyes, any part of your body wants...
Arjun Thomas: Wow, okay.
Sunil: across all cultures and religions needs to be given back. Sri Lanka because of the religion that I was reading that they follow Buddhism, it's part of some of the Buddhism, Buddhism teaches you to give back. It's necessary that you do that. I'm not saying that all of India should do that, the rest of the world should follow. But if we can even do like 0.5%, I think we save a lot of lives. And in blindness, especially in Konya matching, only 7 % of Konya's match. So imagine if you wish to have something and I was a catawag donor. That's after that I decided to give my cornea. It needs to be taken within 96 hours, put in a solution. All that is fine. But there's a lot of chaos before that. Even if I sign up for that, if I do have an accident or suddenly if I die, my parents and family is not told about it. They don't want to do this. There's some issues where you find donors and stuff against your Aadhaar or your records, but still they don't want to do it. We need to create awareness around that.
Arjun Thomas: All right.
Sunil: Second thing is even after I ⁓ harvest, they harvest my cornea, still to match yours is only a 7 % that's a lot of chance. So I think we need to work a lot together so that active sepals can get sight back. My fight is to get that half sight also back because it helps a lot of people in conditions like in India. Because I don't see much of infrastructure being in place for that, society being aware for that. You still have a struggle everywhere. So even if you can get 0.5 % side fact, it's great. We had a very, this is very interesting. I go to UK for work and like football. We take the India team and a couple of my friends are ophthalmologists in UK, senior doctors. So they hosted a dinner for the Indian team there. And in that dinner conversation, a couple of doctors said, what were your conditions? They understood each background. I'm not a medic, but they understood the background and they started speaking to the players. Three players were given a chance to do a specific eye test.
Arjun Thomas: Hmm.
Sunil: understand their conditions if it can be some sort of cure as possible. Now that gave a lot of interest. Out of three, two boys were given a chance that if they wish to and go through surgery or replacement to cornea or nerves, can get a 0.5 or some person with a vision back. One boy declined. He came to me and said, I don't want science. I cannot play football without
Arjun Thomas: Wow.
Sunil: I mean, that's just massive. So they his life is around the world. That's when you realize that. And I told this doctor friend of mine, said, you know, this boy doesn't want to and he is blown away. He's like, soon you have created something for this boy ⁓ where he does not want sight is undermanned. And this is the reality. Like, even if you talk to few visually impaired players, I keep sometimes talking to them. Last month I was talking generally about awareness created what we do beyond football. They said, even if we don't want that feeling, that we get sight, even if you get sight, what will you do? Here, at least you're there. We have a community within ourselves. Wow.
Arjun Thomas: I can only imagine both, I guess, the pride and the burden that you might feel being in that position ⁓ for so many people. There was one more thing that I think you wanted to kind of talk about. You're working on a product, I think, if I'm not mistaken. ⁓ I'd love to kind of get a sense of what that is in the context of, you know, the people that you
Sunil: So part of my work I have touched upon is I run my own business from the year 2003. We do an IT services company and work with a couple of clients across the world. And some spin-off from the ideas that I had, especially working with the community, was giving back again. Through the whole course of giving back, how we can improve their lives technologically. Everybody needs devices, but there's a gap again. And that's been filled a lot now with WhatsApp and they do a lot of work on the phone. That's all been addressed. But still, safety. is a big concern, especially if you are alone as a wish to be buried and you go, God forbid you are alone in the space, even if you are young or whatever. So we started doing these small, small tags and sensors around the space before COVID and formalized it into a startup in 2020, it's called Psychetica Innovations. And now we're this device which is going to sit in homes and we found out that the elderly homes also need it. So it can be in a blind hostel, a large space where the blind people stay or an elderly space where you could be alone or
Arjun Thomas: Hmm.
Sunil: in a bigger space. You watch movements in a room and track that and any anomalies like a fall or something that's not actually a regular movement triggers an alert. And that goes to a kids skin hospital volunteers to Russian health. And we studied that in the first hour, which is called as the golden hour. You try and do as much as you can. You can save a life or a long-term injury. And that's something that we're working on. Some allied work around medicine boxes, triggers, for Alzheimer's, dementia. Again, great for the blind, ⁓ looking at, again, using the good old AI, as an agent, I could do some, could know that the synonymous work along that space, creating basically an ecosystem for the visually impaired and the elderly. And I'm on several forums ⁓ applying ⁓ bootstrap now, but applying to get grants. And if there are like-minded people who want to join, great. ⁓ There is a visually impaired person on board of this team. So I have a visually impaired.
Arjun Thomas: You Hmm.
Sunil: programmer in my IT team last 13 years, 14 years. He came to me as to learn computers and now he's a, he became a Java developer does all our Android development does all accessibility work. So all the clients that I work with get by default accessible work. And this is a huge area because when I speak to my US clients, especially clients in US because they know that section 508 is quite active there. You get slammed a billion dollar suit. Target group, but slammed. I think you must have read a lot of the e-commerce groups are getting slammed.
Arjun Thomas: Accessibility.
Sunil: because now the sites are accessible, apps are accessible. So anything that we make is by default accessible because it goes through the machine by person. That's great. And we also do some sort of testing, awareness around that. There's a couple of platforms that we work on. So he's also on board and a of AI and engineers working on this product. Again, the plan is to go as low cost as possible because there's no, I'm not, I don't want to become like a commercial product out of this. There are no players, many players in the world, think that 4-5 players, Israel, India has got one more, Australia, US, etc. But all in the ⁓ thousand dollar bracket. So I want to go ask for as low as hundred dollars, make sure that people use it. But obviously I can't give it for free and there's maybe a subscription attached to it. So we're testing three devices. I'm in the prototype phase and then going to MVP and then, that's the startup. We have an IT team which is 8 number.
Arjun Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Sunil: it's going to on the table and the football on the ground. So that's the work.
Arjun Thomas: So I think ⁓ it was a fascinating conversation. think I just learned so much. What I would love to do is circle back at some point. ⁓ If you want to do a follow up, ⁓ I'd love to. ⁓ But what I will do is as part of the podcast, I'll kind of put in your details, obviously LinkedIn, access to the website. ⁓ If you're starting the process of ⁓ fundraising, if there's certain structured way that you're going about doing that, I'm happy to plug that in. ⁓ As well as this new kind of product that you're kind of working on. ⁓ If there's ⁓ some way can help, please feel free to reach out if you are looking to kind get access to grants etc. I can see what's working in the region ⁓ or if you're doing a call for just open investment I'm happy to of plug that in as well because it's all kind of really worthy causes and I'm happy to kind of plug this wherever I can and through my network. ⁓ But otherwise thank you for taking the time I know you're a very very busy guy you're flying off I think tomorrow you're off for a bit. ⁓ Where are you off to?
Sunil: So I go into an age tech conference first. So that's Friday, Saturday. I get like many people in the elderly and the disabled space discussing. It's a closed room, 37 people. So I do that. Then next week I'm in Delhi for the Asian Para game selections. then following that, Europe. So there's a bit of trouble coming up. yeah, around the work. So it's around, in and around the work. So that keeps my energy going.
Arjun Thomas: Right.
Sunil: The touch wood, it's been going so far great. I enjoy giving back. So end of the day, I sleep well.
Arjun Thomas: Clearly and no shortage of impact. Again, thank you so much for taking ⁓ time to have this conversation. For me, great learning. I'd love to stay in touch. Best of luck and to the team more importantly. guess rooting now that I know about this, I want to definitely pay attention and see how the team kind of performs. For sure. Yeah.
Sunil: and some people come and watch this game because how much I have asked you to order it I think the day you come and watch it is something and hopefully we play in Singapore because we do have a team in Malaysia and ⁓ couple of my friends in Singapore were also trying to put a game in Singapore to fundraise and help us just put in the Malaysia team across in India and do a game we could plan something you never know
Arjun Thomas: Ike. Right. Sounds good? Sounds good. Yeah, we should definitely stay in touch. And again, best of luck, Sunil, and thank you so much for taking the time again. Cheers. Bye.