ActivO — The Age of Transforming Lives

Sudeep Aprameyan P.B.

Founder, ActivO · Sports Scientist & Human Performance Specialist

ActivO is an MSME-registered sports science and human performance company. Sudeep's work draws together exercise physiology, strength and conditioning, sports nutrition, sport psychology, biomechanics, recovery and performance monitoring — translating research into protocols that produce measurable outcomes. He also works with academic institutions and sporting organisations on research, internships and workforce development, bridging the gap between the lab and the field.

That evidence-first approach comes from firsthand experience — and long before cricket became the focus, Sudeep was a genuine hybrid athlete. In school, he reached district level in long jump, competed at swimming zonals, and practiced taekwondo, alongside playing state-level volleyball for Spikers Club. He represented his high school in basketball, football and athletics, won a team championship in primary school and an individual championship in high school, and was the youngest student from middle school selected for a 25-km cycling expedition. That range carried into college too, where he represented his college team in both volleyball and cricket — and to this day he's fond of table tennis and, honestly, pretty much any sport put in front of him. Off the field, he led Blue House, captained the school band, picked up a bit of violin in middle school, and served as a Scouts & Guides leader — the same range of physical, technical and leadership grounding that now underpins ActivO's belief that performance is built across many domains at once, not just one.

In 2010, while still in PUC, Sudeep trained and travelled with Malnad Gladiators — owned by K Jayaprakash Hegde Associates — in the second edition of the Karnataka Premier League. Players under 17 were ineligible for the KPL auction pool that year, so at 16 his role was that of a talent scout: practicing and travelling with the squad, learning the professional set-up from the inside, before breaking into Karnataka's official Under-19 system the following year. That eligibility gap has since closed: most T20 leagues, KPL included, now run dedicated emerging-player or Under-23 categories that didn't exist then. The side was captained by Ganesh Satish, and the squad that year included Abhimanyu Mithun and KV Bharath, alongside a young bowling all-rounder named Krishnappa "K" Gowtham — someone Sudeep had trained and played alongside at one of the clubs he went on to represent, and who became a genuine inspiration. Mithun went on to play Test and ODI cricket for India; Gowtham built a fourteen-season Karnataka career, multiple IPL contracts, and an India cap of his own on the 2021 tour of Sri Lanka. It was during that same India stint that Gowtham took the time to help Sudeep find a trial at another competitive top-division Bangalore club — a generosity Sudeep has never forgotten, and a friendship that has outlasted both their playing circuits. Sudeep continues to play competitive club cricket today — staying close to the game, and to the fitness it demands.

Sudeep represented Karnataka through the KSCA age-group system from Under-16 to Under-19 — turning out for Sir Syed Cricketers, Jawahar Sports Club (leading its Under-16 side — one of the oldest cricket clubs in Bangalore, founded in 1947), Wilson Garden Cricket Club, Bangalore SCC and Neptune Cricket Club, where he played under the captaincy of Suneel Raju — a Karnataka Ranji Trophy player who also represented India Under-19 on their tour of Pakistan — alongside other clubmates who went on to represent Railways in the Ranji Trophy. At school, his bowling made him a key architect of Presidency School, Nandini Layout's run to the Karnataka title at the Boost Cup Under-16 — sponsored by Boost and Procam International (3/23 in the final, earning Presidency School, Nandini Layout a "Presidency Rule" banner headline in the Bangalore Mirror) — one of KSCA's most prestigious tournaments for talent identification and grooming, drawing over 1,000 schools across Karnataka each year. The final was telecast live on DD Chandana with commentary, and the team was given a red-carpet welcome back to school along the road on their return. That same bowling then helped power the side past the South Zone stage (2/21), qualifying Karnataka's representatives for the BCCI All-India Polly Umrigar Trophy, where Presidency reached the pre-quarterfinal round in Chennai. He also represented Bangalore XI, President's XI, KSCA XI–Under-19 (against Baroda) and the Combined City XI at KSCA's inter-zonal tournaments (right-arm medium pace, right-hand bat). He was named among Karnataka's Under-19 stand-by probables for the Vinoo Mankad and Cooch Behar Trophies two years running, 2011 and 2012. In August 2012 he was picked in the same KSCA Under-19 "Combined City XI" squad as Prasidh Krishna — until an injury shortly after redirected his path out of the fast-bowling pipeline. Along the way he was selected for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru–KSCA Talent Identification Program, guided directly by Vijay Bharadwaj, Venkatesh Prasad, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, David Johnson, Srinivas Murthy and KN Ramesh during his Under-19 years, and training alongside the RCB first team under then-head coach Ray Jennings and S&C coach Shanker Basu — an up-close look at what elite preparation, and its physical cost, actually demands. That same period brought a moment he still describes as surreal: called in as one of just four net bowlers for the Indian team's practice sessions during Pakistan's tour of India, bowling to Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Virat Kohli, Gautam Gambhir, MS Dhoni and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Security around the Indian players was stringent throughout — they arrived and left each session under heavy escort, with no opportunity for photos with fans or net bowlers — so that particular memory lives in Sudeep's recollection rather than a photograph. Months later, three of those net-session batsmen and bowlers — Kohli, Dhoni and Bhuvneshwar — lifted the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy, with Dhoni becoming the only captain in history to win all three ICC white-ball titles. That same Pakistan tour saw Mohammad Irfan — at 7'1" the tallest player ever to appear in international cricket — make his debut.

That injury was serious enough that it could have ended his relationship with sport altogether. Sudeep was diagnosed with spinal canal narrowing — spinal stenosis with disc protrusion — that left him in unbearable pain with loss of sensation and control in his left leg. In the initial days, he was dependent on a wheelchair to get around. Doctors recommended removing the L4–L5 discs and fitting rods into the ilium, and were blunt about the prognosis: simply walking again, let alone playing, would be an achievement. He chose not to operate. What followed was three to four years of continuous rehabilitation and pushing through pain before he returned to competitive cricket — guided through that rehabilitation by Shravan Kumbagowdana, one of the country's top sports physiotherapists, who has since worked with Royal Challengers Bangalore, Kings XI Punjab and Lucknow Super Giants, and who has continued to guide Sudeep ever since.

Tech was never a detour for Sudeep — it goes back to school. Under the ICSE syllabus he studied Java, C++ and Turbo C as a student, well before any of it was a career plan, and that early comfort with technology is what made the Microsoft-outsourced technical support role a natural first step rather than a random one. Alongside that recovery, he completed a Bachelor of Commerce and entered the corporate world on the business side too — first as a brand expert at an app-based company, then in that technical support role. He was the first in his batch to land a job, despite the injury — the wheelchair had only ever been a feature of the initial days, and once mobile again, he was travelling across the city for work through continuing pain, driven by responsibility and financial necessity. From there he moved to Decathlon as a Sport Leader, clearing one of the toughest hiring processes he'd faced — around 14 rounds in all, including a sports fitness test — before going on, still within sports retail, to work alongside the CEO of Williamson Dickie and a handful of other senior leaders, learning how a business actually runs: the demands it has to meet, the gaps in what it offers, and what it takes to bridge them. Four to five years into that corporate life — close to ten years in total spent working with people and understanding the market before ActivO came together — COVID hit, and the retail businesses he was working with were affected dramatically. That upheaval was the final push: it confirmed what he'd long suspected — corporate life wasn't his cup of tea. Eight hours on a cricket field made him happier than eight or nine hours at a desk ever did; he just hadn't found the right channel for it yet. That search led him to a CPD-accredited diploma in physical fitness, certifications in strength & conditioning and performance nutrition from IIT Madras, and a BSc (Hons) in Sports and Exercise Science. Alongside building ActivO, he has continued as a researcher under the mentorship of Dr Srividhya Sivaprakasam and Sharath Arun Maney, CSCS — an active researcher and S&C specialist in his own right, guiding Sudeep's research work. Two abstracts have been accepted on that basis: "Countermovement Jump Outcome Measures & Movement Strategy in Athlete Monitoring" at IISM's International Research Conference (Mumbai, August 2026), and "Acute Effects of an Integrated Breathing and Oculomotor Warm-Up on Visual Search Performance in Trained Collegiate Athletes" at Neuroscience 2026 — the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Washington, DC, one of the largest neuroscience conferences in the world. Tech had opened the first door and business had shaped the years after it; ActivO is where both threads finally meet evidence-based applied science — the same technical instinct from those school years now channelled into force-time analysis, biomechanics and performance monitoring, built on the commercial grounding those early corporate years provided. It's a vision ten years in the making, now realized as an evidence-based performance consultancy built not just for athletes, but for the general population and corporate wellness too.

[ On Record ]

A selection from a much longer paper trail — press clippings, KSCA letters, and scorecards going back to 2009. The list could go on considerably further; these are simply the ones that tell the story best.

KSCA letter, Jun 2012 — RCB–KSCA Academy U-19 selection

Malnad Gladiators (KPL) letter, Sep 2010

Published scorecard — Bangalore Sports Club

Match report, Deccan Herald

KSCA U-19 nets list, Oct 2011 — with Shreyas Gopal, Nischal D, KV Siddarth, Abhishek Reddy, Suchith J, KC Cariappa, HS Sharath & T Pradeep

Combined City XI, Aug 2012 — with Abhinav Manohar, Prateek Jain & Prasidh Krishna

"Presidency Rule" — Bangalore Mirror, Dec 2009 — Boost Cup U-16 Karnataka title, Sudeep 3/23

Mid-over — Boost Cup 2009–10 final, Chinnaswamy Stadium

The moment it was won — team sprint onto the field

Champions — Boost Cup U-16, 2009

Home support in the stands, Chinnaswamy Stadium

With Mohammad Irfan, on Pakistan's 2012–13 tour of India

IISM Research Conference, Aug 2026 — CMJ & athlete monitoring

Society for Neuroscience — Neuroscience 2026 acceptance, Washington DC

Teammates' names redacted on selection sheets except those who went on to represent Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy and/or play IPL/international cricket. Published clippings are cropped to Sudeep's own figures where practical.