Sanand Mitra

His company, VAYAM-Visionaries & Entrepreneurs is a distributor for Mathews & Mission archery bows. Mitra is the honorary mentor for archery at iCAP specializing in Indian collegiate athletics, based in Delhi. He was featured in the Small & Medium Entrepreneur magazine in November 2012.

He landed a job in Indian Railways from which he resigned in 2008 to start his own firm, VAYAM-Visionaries & Entrepreneurs, as authorized importers of archery equipment in India, archery range design consultants and trainers. Sanand has been the chief coach for the archery club at the National Defence Academy (NDA), Pune. He has also been instrumental in starting the concept of archery for masses by conceptualising & organising the world's first archery carnival, Sphoorti, Oct 2018, in Nagpur, and India's first archery competition open for public, The Iron Target Challenge, Jan 2019, in Pune.

He has conducted a series of workshops and lectures on: “Sports Engineering: Design & Dynamics of Sporting Equipment" and "Being a Sportopreneur”, conducted at IITs, IIMs, NITs and universities such as MSU and Baroda. He started VAYAM as a small firm in 2008 and has grown it to its present size.

The most feared competitor in the compound archery circuit for his brief archery career (2005–2007), Sanand raised standards in the national archery circuit. A Robotics & Artificial Intelligence major by education and an entrepreneur, Sanand established VAYAM-Visionaries & Entrepreneurs in 2008 to bring Indian archery to international standards through a corporate endeavour. He is the mentor of Archery for Indian Collegiate Athletic Program (ICAP) and will guide the young athletes to improve in the sport.

While he was waiting for his B-School entrance exam results, in 2005, it has been said that Sanand started archery as a hobby, in a field in Bilaspur. He had no access to any sort of formal training in archery. He practiced his form via downloaded pictures from the dial-up internet connection, from a cyber cafe in Bilaspur. In his usual schedule, he practiced as long as 16–17 hours in the sun, getting up at 5:00 in the morning and shooting indoors, in the college verandah of the SBR College, of which his mother was the principal. In 27 days of shooting and practice, Sanand made his debut on the national archery circuit in the Maharajas College Ground, Ernakulam, Kerala. Winning golds and silvers and breaking national records on his debut, Sanand won the highest medal tally in a single tournament for his state, Chhattisgarh. He had a two-year-long stint in archery and left competitive archery in 2007.

He is a national record holder, gold-medallist and an internationally ranked archer. He was decorated on several platforms, including the Maharaja Praveerchandra Bhanjadeo Award by Chhattisgarh State, decoration for distinguished performance in Sports, 2005.

Sanand Salil Mitra (born May 5, 1983) is the proprietor and owner of VAYAM -Visionaries & Entrepreneurs, an Indian archery pioneer organization. An international archer and twice national gold medallist in archery, he is a state and national awardee with performances in the national archery circuit, since his debut in 2005.