Bhupen Goswami

GUWAHATI : RuPay, the flagship product of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has furthered its commitment to support the holistic development of volleyball in India by partnering with Bramhaputra Volleyball League (BVL).

This partnership has been facilitated by Baseline as a result of RuPay’s association with the Prime Volleyball League as a title sponsor, which is entering its second edition in February 2023. As a sponsor of the Prime Volleyball League, RuPay has also partnered up with BVL’s ‘Train the trainers’, a 7-day workshop program. RuPay will also be providing volleyballs to BVL to be used for grassroots level development training. This initiative is in line with RuPay’s vision to become a comprehensive supporter for the evolution of Volleyball as a sport from grassroots to elite levels. The majority of BVL matches are scheduled to take place from January to March 2023 and will comprise of 600 plus matches. This unique grassroots level league will be organised between the volleyball teams of villages of Assam. The core concept is to leverage a league format to grow the culture for volleyball at the regional level. The response so far has been incredible, with a record participation of over 393 teams from 144 villages in Assam.

The format offered to these village teams is exactly the same as a league format with home and away games. The founder of the Bramhaputra Volleyball League and former captain of the Indian national volleyball team, Mr. Abhijit Bhattacharya said, “RuPay is offering us critical support for our vision to grow talent for Volleyball in the north east region via this train the trainer program. To develop volleyball as a sport bottom up, we need long-term visionary support and this will help us crowdsource talent with the larger intent of streamlining it to training camps and national level leagues & tournaments. We have impacted over 10,000 athletes and over 1 lac people from across 27 districts of Assam with this initiative.” The BVL is organised in three stages including district, zonal and super league levels.

The local community takes ownership of hosting the matches in their respective villages. In its third season, the league will be discovering talent in both boys and girls catagories. The village teams are adopted by well-wishers by contributing a token amount and the proceeds go towards team kits, equipments and transport. Support for the BVL also comes in the form of larger level support as provided by RuPay and other sponsors, as well as individuals who wish to support this initiative, including Dronacharya Awardee Shyam Sundar Rao, Olympian Aparna Popat, FIVB Empowerment Commissioner, Peter Ven Tarel and CEO of the RuPay Prime Volleyball league, Mr. Joy Bhattacharjya. With this added support from RuPay, the coaches and the league will be able to reach a higher level of achievement for the participating athletes and their future growth.