BHUBANESWAR: Sport it 2020, a niche sports and innovation festival, hosted by Xavier Emlyon Business School (XEBS) and Sports and Youth Services department will kick off here at Kalinga Stadium from Saturday.
The two-day festival, first of its kind in India, will see a unique convergence of sports startups, investors, high-performance centres and students from various educational institutes.
The festival will have three different components which include a Sports Hackathon, Start-up Village and Sports Marathon. The hackathon will be organised in association with Start-up Odisha and Sports Unlimitech, the biggest sports and innovation festival in Europe, at XIMB with participation of 10 French students.
The festival, also partnered by Indo-French Chamber of Commerce and Industry along with different French Clubs, will see as many as 12 start-ups working on sports technology, nutrition, flow monitoring, site management, virtual reality and e-games taking part. Leading startups like Mumbai-based Fast and Up, PlayO, Str8bat and SeeHow from Bengaluru, Shapecrunch and Funngae of Delhi besides Bhubaneswar-based startups like KarKhana Makerspace, SportsScience India, NexSB, Akela Adventure will be seen at the festival.
Sports and Youth Services Minister Tusharkanti Behera and Industries Minister Dibya Shankar Mishra will inaugurate the two-day mega event. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will be chief guest at the valedictory function.
Behera said, “With Sport IT 2020, we wanted to create an inclusive platform that would not only celebrate sports innovation and entrepreneurship but also involve sportspersons, sports start-ups, high-performance centres as well as students in a significant way.”