During his Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed India’s desire to host the 2036 Olympics in Ahmedabad, for which the country has already submitted a letter of intent to the organizers. The Olympic bid builds on the sporting and general infrastructure slated for the 2030 Commonwealth Games in Ahmedabad.
All of this puts India's sporting performance in the spotlight. At the recently concluded Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, India finished fourth with 39 medals. Nine of those medal winners were backed by Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), a private company focused on helping Indian athletes win on the global stage. Notably, the organization's financial spending now surpasses even the government's Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) set up for the same cause.
To be sure, the overall spending by the governments, both central and states, dwarf the OGQ and TOPS budgets. The ministry of youth affairs and sports spent about ₹3,100 crore in 2025-26 and is budgeted to spend ₹4,480 crore in 2026-27.
Private bigger than public
OGQ, officially named the Foundation for Promotion of Sports and Games, was established in 2001 by two of India’s sports legends: billiards champion Geet Sethi and badminton icon Prakash Padukone. It has identified 10 Olympic and 8 Paralympic sports in which India has a high chance of winning medals. It picks high-potential sportspersons from these sports, and supports them with coaching, equipment, travel to tournaments, and sports science.
In the past seven years, the scale of OGQ’s financial support has grown fourfold, from ₹19 crore in 2018-19 to ₹77 crore in 2024-25, clocking a compound annual growth rate of 26.2%. Its budget now exceeds the ₹34.8 crore spent by the government's parallel Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS). Over the same period, OGQ expanded its support from 82 to 178 senior athletes and increased its junior scholarship cohort from 81 to 110. Today, the foundation also backs 111 para-athletes, 3 sports federations, and 5 sports academies.
Donors with heft
Beyond cricket, Indian sports have traditionally relied on government backing due to a lack of commercial appeal. Winning medals elevates a sport's profile and opens up commercial opportunities, creating a virtuous cycle. While both OGQ and TOPS are chasing this goal, their strategies differ. TOPS casts a wider net—supporting 489 athletes leading up to Paris 2024 and 369 for Los Angeles 2028—but operates on a smaller budget, resulting in a lower average spend per athlete. At the Glasgow Games, TOPS supported 19 of India's 39 medallists.
Sportspersons can receive financial support from both programmes, as well as other corporate initiatives such as those run by the JSW Group or Reliance Foundation. Among these, OGQ stands out for its enterprise, structure, focus, and finances. It is entirely donor-funded, and the number of donors has more than doubled from 172 to 390 in the past five years. At the same time, the organization saw a decline in donors at the entry level ( ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh), while donor numbers rose across all higher contribution tiers.
Sports and business
In the ₹1 crore and above tier, OGQ’s donor count expanded from 12 in 2020-21 to 31 in 2025-26. Equally impressive is the profile of these supporters, which includes leading corporates such as Axis Bank, Bajaj Group, three HDFC Group entities, HCL Group, Zerodha, and Delhivery, alongside philanthropies like the Rashesh Vidya Shah Family Foundation (associated with Edelweiss) and the HT Parekh Foundation (founded by HDFC's creator). Overall, OGQ presents as a well-funded, professional, and responsive organization.
At the same time, the foundation maintains its deep sports DNA. OGQ’s key promoters are former athletes, and its CEO—former Indian hockey star and passionate sports advocate Viren Rasquinha—earned a corporate-grade salary of ₹1.66 crore in 2024-25. That same year brought a shift in OGQ’s shareholding structure, as Shitin Desai (of DSP prominence) sold his 25% stake to chess legend Viswanathan Anand, Sameer Koticha of ASK Group, and Niraj Bajaj of the Bajaj Group. In 2024-25, OGQ's donation inflows surged from ₹68.9 crore to ₹92.1 crore.
Government support
Private initiatives like OGQ play a crucial role in India’s sports ecosystem. Outside of cricket, most national sports federations operate on tight budgets that cannot support grass-roots expansion, high-standard competitions, or competitive earnings for elite athletes. Demonstrating this funding gap, OGQ raised ₹92.1 crore in donations in 2024-25, exceeding the total combined income of six major Indian sports federations (shooting, athletics, wrestling, archery, boxing, and weightlifting).
Under-funded sporting federations are a global problem, and governments have to step in. A good example is the UK, which went from 15 Olympic medals in 1996 to 60-plus medals in each of the four Olympics starting London 2012. UK Sport runs a programme for elite athletes funded by the UK government and the National Lottery—a financial support system using money from ticket sales. Its budget was £100 million, or about ₹1,080 crore, in 2024-25. By comparison, India, which has averaged 5 medals in the last 4 Olympics, has a long way to go in providing financial assistance.
Earning to spend
This was the chasm in support that Geet Sethi heard about at the 2000 Olympics and sought to bridge via OGQ. The organization’s impact is substantial: 13 of India's 21 medalists across the last four Olympic Games, and 33 of its 48 medalists over the last two Paralympic Games, received support from OGQ. Operating as a Section 8 non-profit company, its primary objective is to advance social welfare, making it eligible for tax benefits. Under this structure, all surplus funds remain within the organization and cannot be distributed to shareholders as dividends.
In each of the four financial years from 2021-22 to 2024-25, OGQ has spent at least 85% of its income for the year. Further, about 92% of its total expenditure in 2023-24 and 89% in 2024-25 was towards sportspersons, as opposed to its own staff or other expenses. The top five spending categories for athletes include travel, professional fees, lodging and boarding, equipment, and coaching fees.
(The story has been updated with context that overall spending on sports by governments far exceeds the amounts spent under OGQ and TOPS.)
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