When we first set foot in Hyderabad in 2020, it was the middle of a pandemic. We had no courts, no local coaches, and no students. What we had was a proven model and the stubborn belief that it would work here too. Five years later, Hyderabad has become our fastest-growing chapter.

This month, we officially opened programs in three new neighborhoods: Kukatpally, Begumpet, and Secunderabad. Each location was chosen based on months of community mapping, school partnerships, and conversations with local families. We do not just show up with basketballs and good intentions. We embed ourselves in the community first. We learn the bus routes kids take, the hours parents work, the specific barriers that keep students from staying in school.

In Kukatpally, we partnered with the municipal government to resurface an abandoned playground into a regulation half-court. The transformation was stunning. A space that had been used as an informal garbage dump is now a place where 120 kids practice three times a week. The first day we opened, a line of students stretched around the block. Some of them had never held a basketball before.

Begumpet presented a different challenge. The neighborhood is more urban, more crowded, and the schools are under intense pressure to produce exam results. We worked with three school principals to integrate our program into their after-school schedule, framing basketball not as a distraction from academics but as a complement to them. Within the first month, teachers reported improved attendance on practice days.

Our Hyderabad team is now 12 coaches strong, and we expect to serve 400 students across these new sites by the end of the quarter. The demand is real. The model works. And Hyderabad is proving that what started in Chennai can scale across India.