Arpan Dixit, global business head for Catfit, spoke to NewsX as a part of its special series, NewsX A-List, where he spoke about Catfit and its goals.
Talking to NewsX about his journey, Arpan said, “When I was young, I was someone who wanted to do something for the environment, which is how I went on to join the paper industry. Then one thing led to another and I was heading India in South-east Asia for the company. But at that point, I realized that whatever I was doing was not going to change anything because I believe the paper industry has evolved and reached a position where there’s not much to do in terms of technology or saving the environment. We’re already supplying some of the finest recycled waste from across the world and then passing it over to the paper industry. That is when I realised that this is something I need to move forward from and do something constructive which is beneficial to people at the grassroots level. In 2016, when I was planning to join the UN, I met my very good friend and founder of Catfit, Col. Rakesh Krishnan, who is former Special Forces and he was heading the Black Cat hub in Calcutta.”
Arpan continued, “He said, ‘if you go for the UN, what are you going to be doing?’ I said I’m going to change something at the ground level for the people. ‘Then why do you need to go to the UN? Why can’t we stay back and do something here in India?’ I said that’s my long-term goal. That’s when he said, ‘Make it your short-term goal.’ That is how Catfit evolved. The idea behind Catfit is that you go to the grassroots and change the lives of people.”
“For example, there are 1,80,000 students committing every year to education. Are we doing anything as a society or as companies about it? This was the first question which had come to our minds. I was also a sportsperson and so was Col. Rakesh Krishnan. But there was nothing at the grassroots level for the performance enhancement of students and catch them young, say between the ages of 8 and 13. That is how Catfit evolved. I said this is something I would want to be involved in and here we are,” he explained.
Speaking further about the idea and different aspects of his methodology, Dixit said, “So, MAST evolved when Catfit was formed in 2017. MAST is a terminology that we coined when we realised that if we are going to people and saying things like ‘performance enhancement’ or ‘psychological development’, we needed to have a keyword which people could relate to. Every school, college, or cricket team has a psychologist, but how were we going to be different? That is when we got in touch with a psychologist from Air Force Intelligence. From Army Intelligence, we got onboard Special Forces officers. We got NSG officers and then pulled all the resources together, which is how MAST was formed.”
“The idea behind this is to bring the best of the Special Forces and the NSG and pass it over to sports education and the corporate sector. This is four-fold, the physical development is just one aspect. The second is psychological development, the third is mental toughness training, and lastly, we have the emotional quotient. A lot of people leave the emotional quotient aside, but if you’re a sportsperson, student or business leader and are not emotionally well, you’re not going be performing at your optimum level. The whole idea was to understand and identify whether someone had depression or stress or anxiety or peer pressure, then counsel them out of it, so they can perform better in their field,” explained Dixit.
Describing the idea behind performance enhancement, Arpan said, “Let’s take a sportsperson in the age of 8 to 18 and a student up to the age of 24. For a sportsperson who’s trying to reach the national or international stage or a student who wants to clear the defense services or the civil services exams, our idea is to give him or her a series of questionnaires – a psychological questionnaire developed by Army and Air Force intelligence retired personnel who are working with us – and identify which core issues there are lacking in. Then, we see their levels of coping with adversity and resilience levels. Let’s say somebody is strong on resilience but his adversity quotient is not that strong. Then we train them for that particular thing. We have people who are TEDx speakers, mental toughness trainers, motivational coaches. They come and speak to the person. Last but not the least, we have a psychologist who comes to the people, training them to be where they want to be.”
Dixit also spoke about the structure of the existing programs. “As far as survival training is concerned, we have camps in Uttarakhand, right in the middle of a jungle. Let’s say a team or an individual sportsperson come. We will teach them how to actually survive in real life scenarios, if and when they happen to be in the middle of it. We have Special Forces retired personnel who will be there and guide them on how to survive in the jungle or if you’re being harassed, molested, or even kidnapped, teach them the methodology of getting out given the resources that they have. Somebody who is 9 to 11 years old can’t be expected to be fighting with big people, but you can still get out of that situation. That is survival training. As far as sports is concerned, we have camps in association with very big firms in Barcelona and Spain. We have one in Kathmandu, one in Bhutan, and within India, we have one in Rajasthan, in Kerala as well as Uttarakhand, where we take sports teams or persons and do a complete overhaul of their mind and physique. Some of us may have mental flaws, emotional flaws or physiological flaws. We identify the flaw and build on it so that the person can move to the next level,” he said.
Talking about the goals of Catfit, Dixit said, “In 2019, we tied up with ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’. We went into Uttarakhand and we started training people in trauma management, CPR and first aid, and self-defence. What we have realised is that there are almost 180,000 people who die in road accidents every year and 2 million people lose limbs or are hospitalised for various things in accidents. Our plan is to teach every school kid trauma management, CPR and first aid to begin with, so that if someone in their family is suffering from a heart attack or there’s a road accident, fire, drowning or snake bite incident, the children can be the first responders. Once the children are the first responders, the next generation that comes will be in a position to help their families and the ones they see are facing some sort of problem. The second is self- defence, where we have NSG, Black Cat and Special Forces commandos who go from school to school or corporate to corporate, teaching women and children military self-defence. Lastly, tackling children committing suicide and going through depression, stress and anxiety. These are our primary projects and we want to provide everyone with the best-grade mental toughness training and ensure that children can get skill training, which will transform their lives in the long run.”