Mr. Saumil Majmudar is the Co-founder and Managing Director of EduSports, which is India’s largest school sports enterprise and manages the sports/ Physical Education programmes in 400 schools across 80+ cities in India and overseas (UAE, Qatar, Nepal) – helping over 300,000 children get healthier and fitter through the magic of sports.
After completing his B.Tech. in Met. Engg. & Mat. Science, from IIT Bombay in 1993, Mr. Majmudar did PGDM from IIM Bangalore. He has also undertaken a Basic Mountaineering Degree from Nehru Institute of Mountaineering and pursued Ignite Entrepreneurship Programme at Cambridge, UK. At IIT Bombay, he resided in Hostel No. 7 and was the Sports Secretary, Sports Councilor and a member of the NSO’s Badminton and Inter-IIT Football team. “IIT Bombay was a revelation for atleast three things – finding that the guys who ragged you the most, turn out to be your best buddies, learning to appreciate home-cooked food a lot more, and that many smart folks could actually balance academics and lukhagiri,” he fondly recollects. Even while building EduSports, he found his stint as a Sports Secretary very helpful. “I am perhaps one of the few IIT-ians, who has applied what he actually learnt at IIT!,” he adds.
Mr. Majmudar started his career in 1995 at Wipro’s Global R&D, as a part of the International Sales team. However, he decided to follow his heart and turned entrepreneur in 1998, first in technology and later in sports. Over the last 15 years as an entrepreneur, he has experienced pivoting, raising funds from Angels and VCs, building a team, getting early customers, failing and then re-building a platform to scale the business. Since 2003, he has been trying to build a business around getting children to play and started SportzVillage, which later morphed into EduSports. Mr. Majmudar has been listed in the ‘Top 50 Leaders Impacting Indian Education’ by Education World. He has received ‘CII Emerging Entrepreneur Award’ by the Confederation of Indian Industries and has been featured on CNBC’s ‘Young Turk’ and Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate.
Mr. Majmudar started the ‘freshers nite’ initiative in Bangalore that resulted in alumni migrating to the city getting connected with other alums. The event is now being replicated by other Chapters as well. He initiated various fund-raising events, to support the “Village Knowledge Center” initiative of the Chapter. Mr. Majmudar was one of the key organizers of the closing event of the IITB Golden Jubilee celebration. “I believe in the value of keeping in touch and building networks irrespective of any direct gain. I think the IITB network is a seriously undervalued network and AA activities are the only way to ensure that the members remain engaged. I also felt that many of the AA activities were too focussed on “giving back” and therefore did not really appeal to the younger group. Hence, I tried to do something different,” he says.
Reading, Karate (holds a brown belt and hopes to get a black belt soon), playing football, badminton, and mountaineering are his hobbies.