How Indian football scored a goal, with OKR kicking in

India’s sports bodies are not tech-savvy, but AIFF is a trendsetter as it adopts the OKR platform to take football in the country to the next level

- Shubhendu Parth

If Intel, Google, Microsoft, Uber and Twitter can do it, so can the drivers of football in India. Surprised? We will come to the whole story, but let us take first things first.

The All India Football Federation (AIFF) – the national governing body for the sport that is affiliated to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and FIFA, the world governing body for football – governs and runs football from the grassroots to elite football and national teams in the country. In 2013, AIFF decided to adopt modern management practices to create a robust structure for its development programmes and bring in more professional approach to game management and improve India’s FIFA ranking.

The result caught the attention of many: the Indian national team improved its ranking from 154 to 97, India qualified for the AFC Asian Cup 2019 in the most emphatic manner by topping its group, it successfully hosted the U-17 World Cup that saw a massive 1.34 million participation, and launched IWL – the professional league for women. Following the success of its four-year strategic plan (2014-17), AIFF decided to launch its second four-year strategic plan in March 2019.