A Footballer & A Fitness Trainer Took the Initiative To Help Women Rediscover Sports.

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A Footballer & A Fitness Trainer Took the Initiative To Help Women Rediscover Sports.

Footballer Tanvie Hans and fitness coach Swetha Subbiah have launched "Sisters In Sweat", an organization based in Bengaluru that encourages women to use various sports as a way to build endurance, reconnect, or find comfort.

Basic Information

"Sisters in Sweat" is an incorporated partnership between fitness coach Swetha Subbaiah and footballer Tanvie Hans. What started as Sunday fitness and football sessions turned into a community of 350 like-minded members.

Apart from the Sunday sessions, it provides football training during the week and beginner sessions for women.

In 2019, it also organized its first football tournament for women. During COVID-19, they shifted their work to Instagram. The week begins with a yoga class on Monday, and Swetha conducts a high-intensity workout.

The community also utilizes expertise from community members to impart various skills like yoga, and dancing to build a community of women and sisterhood.

Beginning Of 'SIS'

When Swetha Subbiah and Tanvie Hans first met, to shoot an ad campaign no less, they probably never imagined that they'd end up creating a community for women to kick it big on the football field.

But that's exactly what Sisters in Sweat (SIS) have been for plenty of women in Bengaluru.

Recalling how they started Sisters in Sweat in 2018, Swetha says, "When I introduced Tanvie to all my friends during a birthday party, they were very excited and they asked if she can teach them the basics of football. She agreed and the following weekend, we hit the ground. While I took care of the warm-up exercises and jogging."

It bears mentioning that while Swetha is a professional fitness instructor while Tanvie has played for football clubs in the United Kingdom and captains the Karnataka Women's Football Team.

"Tanvie handled the football part. They enjoyed the session so much that we formed a Whatsapp group which grew organically. Then there was no stopping us from that point. Currently, we have over 1,000 women in our community."

What kind of women are part of the community?

Swetha exclaimed, "There are thousands of women who forget to take care of their health or fitness after they get busy with families or their jobs.

There are also many women in our community who have never played sports in their lifetime.

These women include mothers, working women, entrepreneurs, business owners, college girls, school girls, and even a few grandmothers."

COVID has also pushed them to take things online, "We realized that Sisters in Sweat is more than a support group for women and it has helped them in many ways in the past three years.

Hence, we moved to virtual sessions which allowed people across the country and a few from other countries to participate in our fitness sessions.

These sessions are led by different experts and they are fun to participate in."

One of their major focus points is to try and motivate young women to consider a career in sports.

Through Sisters in Sweat, we want to bring many such women or girls and create job opportunities for them.

As the community grew bigger, the duo decided to include a few more sports - including box cricket and are now building a community of cyclists and they are preparing to launch basketball as another option.

Mission Of The Initiative

Founded by Swetha and Tanvie, the objective of this for-profit organization is to bridge the gap of women dropping out of sports, especially after school or college.

With multiple sports formats including football, basketball, and touch rugby, they give a community of over 3,700 women from many walks of life regular access to sports.

Achievement Of 'SIS'

Sisters in Sweat has also recently tied up with BFC (Bengaluru Football Club). They give community members tickets to watch their men's football game live at the stadium whenever it happens in the city.

This is just another way for them to encourage women to be a part of the city's sporting culture and watch the sport that they are actually playing.

They are also planning to collaborate with other such football clubs across India as well as looking forward to collaborating with athleisure wear brands or brands that promote healthy eating habits.

As part of their community offering, Sisters In Sweat is also trying to create an ecosystem for women in sports where they have the opportunity of finding gainful employment as coaches or in managerial roles.

Within their team, they have one girl who is a professional football player and heads the operations for Bengaluru. They have several female coaches.

They earn revenue through sponsorships for their events, sessions, etc. Most of the time, each of their events has a different sponsor like Tata Tetley and Living Food.

Note From Swetha

As our community has grown and women tell us stories of how much joy sports has brought into their lives, we were really inspired. This gave us the purpose and reason to invest all our time into building this community.