80 kilometres a day. That is what Manoj Kumar drove, back and forth, so his daughter could throw punches at a boxing club in Bhiwani. He was a farmer. There was no sponsor waiting at the gate, no camera crew, just a girl named Sakshi Chaudhary and a coach named Jagdish Singh Tarar who had once shaped an Olympic medallist called Vijender Singh.
Nobody was paying for any of this. That is the point.
Fast forward to Glasgow, 2026. Sakshi steps into the ring for the 51kg final against England’s Ruby White, a fighter unbeaten in 68 straight amateur bouts. Sakshi wins 5-0. White’s streak is gone. So, in a quieter but no less real sense, is a piece of the old story about Indian sport, the one where talent from a dusty akhara has nowhere to go but a government job and a pat on the back.
India left Glasgow with 10 boxing medals, 7 of them gold, the best haul the country has ever produced at a Commonwealth Games, beating the 9 medals from Gold Coast in 2018 and the 7 from Birmingham in 2022.
On paper, that is a sports story. Underneath it, though, is a business story, and a messier one than the medal table suggests.
The 85 percent problem
Here is the number that explains everything else in this piece. According to GroupM ESP’s annual sports marketing report, cricket swallows somewhere between 85 and 87 percent of all commercial spending in Indian sport, across media rights, sponsorships and endorsement deals.
Every other sport in the country, boxing included, is fighting over what is left. Roughly 13 to 15 percent, split among hockey, badminton, wrestling, athletics and, yes, boxing.
Think about what that means for a boxer who has just won a Commonwealth gold. For a week or two, she is everywhere. Chief ministers tweet about her. News channels want a soundbite.
Then the cycle moves on, because cricket always has another match, another auction, another controversy waiting. The attention economy in India does not really pause for anyone outside the 22-yard pitch.
So what happens to the money?
Cash first, brand later
The first cheque an Indian boxer sees after a Commonwealth gold usually comes from the government, not a company. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports hands out 20 lakh rupees for a gold medal under its Special Cash Awards scheme.
Haryana, which treats its boxers the way some countries treat war heroes, goes much further, 1.5 crore rupees for gold, 75 lakh for silver, 50 lakh for bronze, plus a shot at a government job.
For a family that has spent years borrowing money at high interest just to buy gloves and bus tickets to tournaments, 1.5 crore is not pocket change. It is a farm loan cleared. It is a proper roof.
It is, in Sachin Siwach’s case, some relief for a household in Mitathal village that leaned on informal moneylenders to fund his early career, back when he was winning gold at the 2016 AIBA Youth World Championships and nobody outside Bhiwani knew his name.
But a lump sum is not a business model. It is a rescue, not a runway.
That is where the Indian Army quietly does something interesting. Sakshi Chaudhary and Preeti Pawar are both in uniform, Sakshi a Havildar in the Corps of Military Police, Preeti a Naib Subedar and, notably, the first woman commissioned directly into the Army through sport.
What they get is not glamorous. A salary. Housing. Medical cover. A pension later, between 6,000 and 20,000 rupees a month, under a scheme built for meritorious sportspersons.
Call it what it really is. An insurance policy against a market that has not shown up yet.
When the market does show up
Somewhere in the last decade, a new kind of institution started scouting Indian combat sport, and it did not wait for medals. Organisations like JSW Sports, through its Inspire Institute of Sport, and the non-profit Olympic Gold Quest began picking out teenagers at junior nationals and Khelo India events, long before anyone could put a rupee value on them.
This is, in effect, venture capital for human beings. You spend on a 16-year-old’s diet, her biomechanics, her flights to junior world championships, years before you know if she will ever fight for India. Most of that bet does not pay off. Some of it does, spectacularly.
Once an athlete breaks through, agencies such as Baseline Ventures, IOS Sports & Entertainment and Cornerstone move in with representation deals, usually taking a commission of 10 to 20 percent on endorsements, appearances and licensing income. It is the same basic arrangement a film actor or a cricketer signs, just with far smaller numbers attached.
And the numbers really are smaller. This is where the gap becomes uncomfortable.
Neeraj Chopra and PV Sindhu, sitting at the very top of Indian Olympic sport, command some of the strongest endorsement opportunities in the country, with brands willing to pay a premium for their reach, reputation and association with elite sport.
One rung below are established champions such as Nikhat Zareen, Mirabai Chanu and Lovlina Borgohain. Their commercial opportunities are more varied, spanning public sector enterprises, nutrition and fitness brands, regional businesses and other companies looking to associate with proven sporting success.
Then there is the emerging tier, where athletes such as Preeti Pawar, Sakshi Chaudhary and Sachin Siwach currently sit. These are rising names whose commercial value is still developing.
Their opportunities tend to come from regional fitness and lifestyle brands, local businesses and government-led campaigns, with the potential to grow significantly as their profiles and sporting achievements rise. It is real money. It is also a fraction of what a Commonwealth gold might fetch in a country obsessed with the sport it happens to be won in.
The girl who paints between rounds
Preeti Pawar’s story does not read like a spreadsheet, and that is exactly why it might end up worth more than one.
She grew up in Bhiwani, daughter of a Haryana Police officer and former kabaddi player, niece of a national-level boxer who first put gloves on her hands at 14. She started boxing, oddly enough, after watching the film Dangal and watching Sakshi Malik win Olympic bronze at Rio in 2016.
Somewhere along the way she also became a serious calligraphy and quilling artist, sketching Mandala patterns to calm her mind before fights.
Weeks before the Paris Olympics in 2024, she was diagnosed with Hepatitis A. Hospitalised, weak, she went into her Olympic bout underprepared and lost in the pre-quarterfinals. Two years of rebuilding followed. Then Glasgow, and a 5-0 win over Canada’s Scarlett Delgado for India’s first boxing gold of the Games.
Agencies love this kind of story, and not cynically. A comeback from illness is the sort of narrative that health and wellness brands, insurance companies and women’s empowerment campaigns are actually looking for. It is a human story that happens to fit a marketing brief, which is a strange but very real overlap.
Sakshi Chaudhary’s story fits a different brief. She tore a shoulder muscle in 2022, missed the Commonwealth and Asian Games that year, missed Olympic qualification twice, then rebuilt herself with a sports psychologist, breathing exercises and a decision to drop from 54kg to 51kg.
In her selection trials in May 2026, she beat two world champions, Nikhat Zareen and Minakshi Hooda, on back to back days, just to earn a place on the team she then took gold for in Glasgow.
That is not a brand story. That is a survival story that happens to have a brand attached later.
The quiet danger of comfort
Here is the part that sports economists worry about more than they say out loud. A big state cheque and a safe Army job can, without anyone intending it, take the edge off an athlete’s hunger to build a personal brand.
Cricketers grow up knowing nobody is guaranteeing them anything. Every run, every wicket, is also an audition for the next contract.
Boxers from Haryana’s so called Mini Cuba belt, the cluster of villages that has produced fighter after fighter, do not face quite the same pressure once the government cheque clears and the uniform is issued. The safety net is real, and it is also, in a strange way, a small tax on ambition.
Add to that a second problem. Regional heroes rarely become national ones without repeated international success. A boxer can be a legend in Bhiwani and still be invisible in Mumbai or Bengaluru, unless she keeps winning on the biggest stages, again and again, until the whole country notices.
What the smart money is starting to do
The playbook that works, and there is now a working playbook, comes from athletes like Nikhat Zareen, who signed multi-year deals with Adidas and NMDC, and Mirabai Chanu, who partnered with Adidas and Manipal Hospitals.
The lesson from both is the same. Do not wait for a medal to start building a story. Build it during the years nobody is watching, so that when the medal does come, there is already a person the public feels they know.
Agencies are slowly shifting from being deal brokers who show up after a final to being long-term brand builders who show up before the sub-junior nationals. Corporate sponsors, for their part, are being nudged away from one-off congratulatory adverts toward CSR-linked partnerships that actually last more than a news cycle.
And sports administrators have their own homework. A one-time cheque of 1.5 crore rupees changes a family’s life for a year or two. Financial literacy, wealth management guidance, and continued investment in facilities and mental health support could change an athlete’s earning power for a decade.
Back to the ring
Sakshi Chaudhary is 22 years old. She spent years missing Olympic berths by the narrowest of margins, watched a shoulder injury take a full season from her, and still found her way to a Commonwealth gold by beating a fighter with 68 straight wins to her name.
Her father no longer needs to drive 80 kilometres a day. That particular sacrifice is done. What comes next for her, and for Preeti Pawar, and for Sachin Siwach, depends less on how hard they can hit and more on whether India’s sponsors, agencies and policymakers can finally build something that outlasts a headline.
The punches, it turns out, were always the easy part.