With growing passion about fitness in the Steel City, cycling has brought together the young and the old to pedal long and wide across the city.
To bring home the globally popular, ever-growing culture of cycling clubs, a bunch of enthusiasts from Tata Steel with the help of Tata Steel Adventure Foundation (TSAF) took it upon themselves to give the city very own, and very first cycling club ‘Steel Cyclos’.
Bachendri Pal, director TSAF officially launched the club and its log. Ashish Chaudhary, manager, Tata Steel said that the objective of the club is reduction in carbon footprint and go green, to get fitter, socialise, explore and brainstorm ideas on the go and to forge new bonds and build up team spirit.
“This group is meant for all those people who desire to undertake cycling as a leisure as well as fitness activity and also want to relieve some of their childhood memories of exploring new places. Some of the activities that the club will be organising include a variety of weekly rides, adventure tours, trainings, triathlons and much more, along with collaborations with cycling clubs of cities all over India. The club will have its own social media page, where the interested people can get a detailed idea including rules and signup for the club without any membership fees,” noted another official.
Members must own the cycle and helmet to be part of the club. The Core Committee of Steel Cyclos are Ashish Chaudhary – manager, RTG, Karan lakhani – Sr manager, Raw Material Management, Hemant Gupta – sr manager, TSAF, Vaibhav Jain- manager, Scientific Services, Anup Mohanta – manager, Bulk Procurement, Nazish Imdad – manager, Raw Material and Sonali Kamble – researcher, Tata Steel.
Meanwhile, the budding managers of B-school XlRI also boast of fitness freaks joining the bandwagon. Under the banner of SIGMA (Social Initiative Group for Managerial Assistance) a committee at XlRI, students have launched a Campus Cycle Project. Started with a pilot run of 36 cycles to commute between the old and the new campus, the team has now 76 active members.
Dolly Rohira, secretary of SIGMA, said that the initiative is a small step towards promoting fitness among students and also a greener future, with an aim to reduce the time and effort of students to move between the three campuses.
“We started with 36 cycles but its popularity has increased and now we have 76 cycles. We have also hired a full time person to maintain cycles,” informed Rohira. She added that a lot of students are using cycle to commute inside the campus.