CoolCoach

The Problem - Among the millions unemployed, there is a large number of underprivileged  youth who pursued sports in their schooling years but suddenly found that they were 18-22 years old, with neither an income from their sport, nor the academic qualifications to pursue alternate career options.

The Solution - The CoolCoach Fellowship Program is a unique vocational training program inspired by Teach For America, where we place selected underprivileged sportspersons as Physical Education Teachers in under-resourced schools. We build on our Fellow's innate kinesthetic skills and give them the tools to become effective fitness trainers and sports coaches. During the year long program, they further hone their skills by instilling healthy habits in students who otherwise don't have access to Physical Education. 

Scale - The growing fitness industry needs a lot of trainers and so do under-resourced schools and this is true of India and many developing countries!

Meet Anand who did very well in school and ended up with a job at Google. Everyone knows how hard it is to get a job at Google, and they get even more excited when I tell them that Anand comes from very humble beginnings (both his parents are daily wage laborers.) Most people are surprised when I reveal that this story makes me unhappy. Anand did well in Sports - he is a state level athlete - and the job he got at Google was as a security guard. Don't get me wrong, it's not the job that is the problem - in fact Anand is lucky because most sportspersons from low-income families end up becoming daily wage laborers if at all they get a job - but the fact that someone who loves to MOVE ends up spending most of his time standing STILL is a tragedy. Since Anand spent most of his time mastering his sport, neither did he earn academic qualifications nor did he master basic academic skills that allow him to learn new things. There are MILLIONS of Anands in the world and we build vocational training programs for such kinesthetically gifted but underprivileged youth.

The CoolCoach Fellowship Program is a unique - yearlong, earn while you learn - vocational training program inspired by Teach For America/Teach For India Fellowship program. 

We recruit underprivileged sportspersons, give them foundational training and place them as Physical Education Teachers in under-resourced schools at the beginning of the academic year. During the year,

• Monday to Friday - Our Fellows goto school and deliver movement based and inclusive Physical Education classes along with sports coaching for students.

• Sunday - We conduct day long trainings for our Fellows, held at different gyms/fitness centers where we up skill our Fellows and prepare them to build their careers in the fast growing fitness and sports industries. 

At the end of the program, not only do our Fellows have the training that sets them apart but they enter the workforce with relevant work experience. Training children prepares them to train adults much more than you could imagine

The CoolCoach Fellowship program benefits 18-24 year old youth who did really well in Sports during their schooling years and they come from impoverished backgrounds. 

During our research phase, the founding team spent a lot of time with the kind of youth that we hire to better understand them, their motivations and their aspirations. We also ran multiple pilot programs and today, our team consists of graduates of our program who continue to inform our understanding. 

In addition, we have set up internal processes to ensure that we are constantly listening to our Fellow's voices. 

CoolCoach realizes that the future of work will involve a lot of personalized services - fitness being one of them. Yes, in today's world there are multitudes of fitness apps but the elite (entrepreneurs, actors, statesmen) train with personal trainers. In a country like India, where majority of the population has had not physical education during their school years, we need fitness trainers to help teach people basic movements. 

A fitness trainer can not only earn a decent income but the barrier to entry is low in terms of academic qualification which makes it exciting sportspersons with limited academic qualification. 

1. Blended Learning Model - We have created program that has online learning, offline learning and "On The Job" training that helps the youth we serve learn holistically and at their own pace. 
2. New Industry - The Fitness industry is one of the fastest growing industries. This industry is especially relevant because it directly battles the menace of Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) which the WHO calls one of the biggest health threats to face mankind. 
3. Selects and Builds on existing Talent - Unlike other models, we focus on youth who have already shown potential by earning accolades as a sportsperson. 
4. Earn while you Learn - As part of our program, youth our placed in under resourced schools as Physical Education Teachers. Since they are delivering a very important service by educating and instilling healthy habits in the next generation, we are able to raise money and pay them stipends. 

In the last 3 years, we have used a variety of different open source and free technologies to deliver our programs -

1. Moodle - Our training program uses Moodle, an open source Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to deliver our training program across different cities. It also helps bringing testing techniques such as multiple choice questions which are new to our youth
2. Google Docs/Sheets - We teach our youth to use these softwares so that they also understand and are capable of using collaboration tools
3. Zoom/Video Calling software - We use a variety of video calling software, especially zoom to deliver our training even during these times of lockdown

Moodle, Google Office and Zoom are widely used technologies and their benefits are well documented. 

The youth we target face 4 main challenges -

1. They don't have academic skills and academic qualifications
2. Given  their lack of academic performance, their families are reluctant to invest any money in more education.
3. Given the financial needs at home, their families put pressure on the youth to get any job and start earning money.
4. They don't know where to find jobs that match their skills

We solve these challenges by -

1. Creating a program that builds on their innate talent and gifts and hence makes it easier for them to learn and grow.
2. We use an Income Sharing Agreement (ISA) to allow youth to join our program with no upfront costs
3. We pay the youth a monthly stipend so that they can contribute small amounts back to their family kitty
4. Our program is designed in such a way that they are exposed to the kind of gyms they will be employed in one day and we connect them directly to employers. 

1. Today -
   1. No. of youth we are currently serving - 16
   2. No. of students we served this year - 8002
2. In one year -
   1. No. of youth we will be serving - 200 (we want to start operations in 5 cities)
   2. No. of students we will be serving - 100,000 (1 youth serves as PE teacher in 1 school which typically has 500 students)
3. In 5 years - 
   1. No. of youth we will be serving - 2000
   2. No. of students we will be serving - 1,000,000

• The Fitness Training and Sports Coaching Industries are growing and need lots of trainers and coaches. 
• To fulfill that demand we have a unique training program for sports persons from low-income families that not only gets them job ready but also as part of the training gets students in low-income schools healthy and fit. 
• The more trainers we need, the more low-income schools we need as our training ground. 

For the next year, 

1. we plan to focus on building our program to operate in this post-covid reality which might mean a different schooling timetable. 
2. We also plan to grow our our B2C training program that can help our Fellows get an additional income by training clients online

In the next 5 years, we will focus on how to build the operations to scale and deliver this program in 2000 schools while impacting 2000 youth per year and getting 1,000,000 students healthier and fitter

1. Financial - We need to figure out the right balance of funding sources (CSR, Education Loans, Social investors) and raise the funds
2. Technology - We need to create course content in multiple languages to better serve different markets within India and around the world
3. Market - Though our model of training is very unique, there is no dearth of Fitness training courses in the market. Also the barriers to entry are very low for such training programs and we will need to stay ahead of the curve. 

1. Financial - Through Income Sharing Agreements, tie ups with loan companies we would like to find ways in which we can get paid for the training we provide while our youth can pay back once they get jobs. We will also be working to deliver high social impact in the form of health outcomes which will make us extremely attractive for Healthy Focussed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds and foundations. 
2. Technology -  The good news is that a Squat and a Push up is the same in Pune and in Peru. Our USP has been curating content that makes it fun and interesting for our youth to learn (For example - we found a Bollywood actor who talks about measuring Fat percentage to aide is physical transformation for a role) and then delivering it in fun ways to our youth. We will need to keep up to date with Ed tech software to give our competition a run for their money. 
3. Market - Currently, our USP is the On The Job training and soft skills training. We need to continue to build on that to stay ahead of the curve. 

Full time - 3

Part time - 2

Contractors - 3

Volunteers - 4

The CEO of CoolCoach, Suraj has over 15 years of experience working in a variety of different social sector organizations in India and East Africa. His focus has always been on operations and impact. While building CoolCoach, he earned his fitness training certification and coached at an elite CrossFit gym in Pune. 

Our founding team, includes Teach For India alumni who understand low-income schools and a certified Crossfit and Rehab trainer who helps us build programs that are relevant to the fitness industry. 

Our board of directors and advisors come with elite skills in finance,health, sports, legal and design!

Apart from a number of schools in Pune and Kozhikode, we partner with over 14 different gyms and fitness centers. 

1. CoolCoach was also part of the inaugural cohort of TFIx, an incubator run by Teach For India - https://www.tfix.teachforindia.org/
2. CoolCoach is part of Atma, an accelerator for education enterprises in India - https://atma.org.in/

CoolCoach has 4 revenue streams -

1. Sportspersons from Low-income Families - They pay for the training program we provide. They pay by singing Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs) or by taking loans
2. Schools/CSR - They pay for the School Health Program we implement in the schools to bring High Quality Physical Education. 
3. Gyms/Fitness Centers - They pay us a finders fee once they employ graduates of our program
4. Direct customers - We have just launched a direct B2C business where we employ graduates of our program to provide Personal and Semi-personal fitness training (online and offline) who pay us for this service

In the last 3 years, we have been able to prove that our impact model works ie we can select youth with limited academic qualification, place them in low-income schools as Physical education teachers and place them in the fast growing fitness industry once they graduate. 

We have also got revenues from all the different customers we have described in the answer above. Here is our path to sustainability -

1. Enforceable Income Sharing Agreements and/or partnerships with loan-providers for non-traditional learning programs will get us paid for our programs in advance
2. CSR and Foundations and schools will pay for the School Health Program. Over time the per month cost of the entire program will be brought down to less than the per month cost of PE teacher hence making it very attractive. This funding will allow us to give a good stipend to our Fellows
3. After our Fellows graduate, they should spend 1-2 years with us in our B2C program will make our work sustainable. 

1. Access to like minded organizations and partners who have built non-traditional training programs
2. Access to best practices when it comes to teaching and training technology
3. Advice on how to use AI and ML to better create personalized training for our youth
4. Creating a "Nudge system" to be deployed at a school level to ensure students lead healthy and active lives.

1. We need help in better understanding scholarships and Income Sharing agreements.
2. How do we build and scale a technology solution at a school level where access is still a problem
3. Most Fitness Certification are brand plays. We need to really up our game there.  

We hope to work closely with MIT especially the faculty and teams that work on learning and training. We also look forward to partnering with the D-Lab to build solutions for the low-income schools we work in

In all the schools we work in, girls almost did not participate in Physical Education classes because they believed it was not for them. Our gender inclusive program helps girls learn the skills to keep themselves active and healthy.

The Fitness Trainers job is a lucrative one. If we win this prize, we will use the proceeds to get our program certified by some of the leading fitness institutions of the world so that graduates of our program can have a globally recognized certificate in their kitty