Mallepally shop owner Junaid Moiuddin trains over 100 kids in open-air boxing

In Mallepally, Hyderabad, 32-year-old clothing store owner Junaid Moiuddin is running an open-air boxing training programme that has coached over 100 neighbourhood children over the past year. Every evening around 7 pm, after shutting his shop counter for the day, Moiuddin transforms a local football ground into a training arena where children, including girls as young as five, train until 10 pm or 11 pm.

Moiuddin started the initiative after noticing his nieces spending most of their free time at home on mobile phones. Seeking to get children out of their homes and into sports, he initially began coaching his nieces before other neighbourhood children started joining the evening sessions.

The training programme does not charge a fixed fee. When parents are able to contribute money, Moiuddin uses those funds to purchase boxing equipment for children who cannot afford to buy their own. Among his students is 12-year-old Ali, whose family could not afford boxing classes before Moiuddin brought him into the training sessions.

Another trainee, 10-year-old Afifa Fatima, began training at age seven. Despite breaking down in tears on her third day due to the intensity of the sessions, she continued to return and has since become one of his fastest and most regular students.

Moiuddin's own boxing journey began in Bengaluru nearly a decade ago, where he trained for about two years before a shoulder dislocation ended his hopes of pursuing the sport professionally. He stated that he established the Mallepally training programme so that local children would not lose out on the opportunities in sports that he lost.