Hyderabad, June 4, 2013

Mr. Anil Kumar, Managing Director of Great Sports Infra, India’s leading sports infrastructure company, was awarded the prestigious CII-Business Line Emerging Entrepreneur Award 2012-13 at Hotel Taj Krishna recently.
Hon’ble Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Ms. D. Purandeshwari was the chief guest of the function and presented him with the award, in the presence of Mr. Adi Godrej, Mr. G.V. Sanjay Reddy, Mr. Krish Gopalakrishnan among other captains of the industry.
From a record 400+ nominations, the awards committee short-listed 39 finalists. Insights from several global models coupled with inputs from knowledge partner Grant Thornton made the selection process robust. Criteria such as vision, execution, personal leadership qualities, performance and growth, innovation, sustainability and scalability of the enterprise, competitive standing and strength of the management team were looked into before picking the winners. Hence, this award is as much for potential future achievement as for the distance they have come so far.
After being announced the winner, Anil Kumar says, “This is by far the most prestigious award I have won and thank CII for recognizing young and up-coming companies. It motivates us to do even better in the years to come. A special thanks to all our early clients, employees, distributors and investors who had faith in this concept”.
GSI is India’s leading sports infrastructure solution provider. It was the first company to introduce the next-generation artificial grass which “Looks Like Grass...Feels Like Grass...and Plays Like Grass” and today, there are over 4500 installations across 225 cities & towns in India. This includes many FIFA standard football fields as well, like the iconic Salt Lake stadium. Prominent clients include Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Infosys, Taj Mahal Palace & Towers, Hero Honda, Reliance Industries and many more. The product portfolio spans across artificial grass for sports & landscaping, complete range of indoor and outdoor sports flooring, running tracks and sports field conditioning systems. GSI is a winner of CII-Business Line ‘Emerging Entrepreneur’ Award 2012 and finalist of the prestigious TATA NEN Hottest Start-ups and ET-Power of Ideas.