Delivering the goods – Sandip Sargar’s journey from being a food delivery agent to world champion
Indian food delivery company Zomato, sponsor of the ongoing World Para Athletics Championships, recently shared a video on its Instagram handle as part of a promotional event. It featured some of the country’s top contenders at the marquee competition, particularly of those who won medals at the Paris Paralympics last year.
One athlete who didn’t feature in the said advertisement was Sandip Sanjay Sargar. The 32-year-old, who competes in the F44 category (lower limb competing without a prosthesis, affected by limb deficiency, leg length difference, impaired muscle power or impaired passive range of movement) of the men’s javelin throw, didn’t have a medal from the French capital. He’d never medalled at a Worlds meet before.
However, in hindsight, the company would have felt it missed a trick by not including Sandip in the montage. It’s not just because on Tuesday night, Sandip won gold in the men’s T44 javelin throw event with a personal best of 62.82m. He’s also probably the only para athlete in the competition who can claim to have actually been a Zomato delivery agent.
These days, Sandip has a steady Government job. On Wednesday morning, he had a meeting with TOPS—the Government’s high-performance sports funding unit—to sketch out his plans.
He has both Government and private sponsors. But at the start of his career, when there was none of that, Sandip carried out food deliveries for two years to pay the bills for his training.
Self belief
The reason Sandip did this was because he believed in himself. Only a few others did. Most wrote him off. Sandip lists out the reasons the naysayers had—he had started too late and he didn’t have the right contacts or resources.
They weren’t wrong.
Until he was 23 years old, let alone thinking it was a viable career option, Sandip had never even heard about para sports. He grew up in a small village named Kargani in Maharashtra’s Sangli district. It wasn’t that Sandip, who had suffered a serious injury after being hit by a truck when he was four, didn’t enjoy playing sports. He had even competed at the state level alongside able-bodied athletes. But he knew that his injury, which made it hard for him to develop much power in his lower legs, would always leave him slower and weaker than his compatriots.
“I had no idea that I even had an option of becoming a para athlete. I knew I was physically disabled, so I thought I would study and write the Maharashtra civil services exam,” he said.
It was while reading up for the General Knowledge section of the examination that Sandip, who had graduated from an engineering college in Sangli, came across something that changed his life. “There was a section on (2012 Paralympic gold medallist high jumper) Mariyappan Thangavelu. That was when I realised there was something like sports for people with disabilities. I thought I could also perhaps try this as well,” he said.
At that time, Sandip admits his ambitions were limited. “I didn’t think I was going to go to the Paralympics or anything. But I thought if I somehow managed to win a medal at the national level, it would help me apply for a Government job,” he said.
When he started practising the javelin throw, Sandip had little idea what he was doing. “I practised at a cricket ground and used a bamboo javelin. I had no coach so I used to watch videos on YouTube to learn,” he said.
Delivery boy
Despite limited training, Sandip qualified for the Maharashtra State Championships, but his luck ran out when he went to his first national competition in Jaipur in 2017.
“It was a disaster,” he recalls. “I had never competed on synthetic tracks, and I had never thrown with a steel javelin. One official got very angry with me. He asked why I had come to the Nationals when I didn’t even know how to be a sportsperson,” he said.
That insult lit a fire under him. Sport then wasn’t just a way to get a Government job. Sandip decided he would make something of himself as an athlete. “I decided to go to Pune to train properly and become a sportsperson. I decided to put my studies on hold for this. At that time, I was working as a manager in a hotel in Sangli but I gave up that job as well,” he said.
Sandip moved to Pune, where he stayed with his sister and her husband, the only people he knew in the city. He knew he couldn’t ask for support from home. “ My father is a farmer, and I couldn’t ask him to send me money. So, I borrowed an old motorcycle from my brother and started working as a delivery boy with Zomato,” he said.
For the next couple of years, Sandip’s life would revolve around his training and his job. “At that time, I was training with Mahesh Patil sir at the Balewadi Sports Complex. I used to train in the gym from 5am to 7am. After that, I had to stop because that was when the breakfast orders would begin. Once breakfast peak hours ended, lunch rush would start. Demand would slow down in the early evening, so I would go and start training between 4pm and 7pm. After that, the orders for dinner would start coming in, so I would get on my bike once again. I worked this way for two-and-half years,” he says.
The schedule was punishing. “I had to work for eight hours at least because there was a ₹220 incentive if I was working for that long. ₹6,000 a month would be enough to take care of my petrol, food and training costs,” he says.
Moments of doubt
There were moments of self-doubt. “There were times when I wondered what exactly I was doing. A lot of people told me I was crazy because I was starting my sports at 24. That was an age when many people were ending their careers. There were times when I had to make a delivery, and I found out that my order was going to someone I knew from my village. That person would ask me why I was working as a delivery boy in Pune,” he said.
Apart from those moments where his identity accidentally became known to people from his village, Sandip told very few people what he was doing. “I didn’t even tell my father because I knew he wouldn’t understand why I was working as a delivery boy,” he said.
Support sometimes came from unexpected quarters. “I had a friend among the delivery agents. He was the one who showed me how to make all the orders. At the start, I wasn’t even sure how to navigate all these tall buildings. There were days when I was very tired and he would go on my deliveries for me. I’m still friends with him,” he recalled.
The routine was difficult, but Sandip stuck to it. In 2018, he competed at his second National Championships. This time, he won gold. He continued to work as a Zomato agent, though. When things got hard, he’d keep motivating himself. “I told myself I needed to keep going. I told myself that in 2 -3 years, I’ll be something. Then, in 2021, I became a reserve athlete for the Tokyo Paralympics. I was disappointed that I couldn’t go myself but I knew I was on the right path,” he said.
Things have only been looking upwards since then. In 2022, he found his first private sponsors in the company Olympic Gold Quest. He got a Government job not long after. Since then, Sandip’s been a regular at competing at the international level for India.
It’s not that things have been smooth sailing since. The nature of his ailment means that training isn’t a straightforward affair. “Most of my strength is in my upper body. I can do a bench press of 160kg but my lower body takes a long time to get activated. I can’t generate speed on the runway,” he said.
The fact that he started as late as he did means that injuries are a constant companion. Although he’s competed at the World Championships and Paralympics before, he finished fifth at both the 2023 Kobe Worlds and the 2024 Paris Games because of the after effects of an injury.
Sandip poses for the shutterbugs during the medal ceremony.
| Photo Credit:
PTI Photo/Karma Bhutia
Sandip poses for the shutterbugs during the medal ceremony.
| Photo Credit:
PTI Photo/Karma Bhutia
All those disappointments, though, have been wiped clean with his first world title. While his days of delivering food are now in the past, Sandip looks back at them with pride. “I don’t have any embarrassment about it now. Yeh wahi seedi thi jis se mai aage nikla. (These were the steps I had to take to find success). I tell people that if they put their mind to it, they can do anything. People find excuses not to succeed. They said I was too old. That I didn’t have the resources. But I just did what I needed to,” he says.
Sandip’s 32 now, older than many of his competitors but also less experienced than many. Yet he says he’s got plenty more to achieve. “I have many goals. I did a Personal Best at the World Championships but I know I can throw further. I want to make a throw of 75m. I am far from that target but I know I will reach it. If I look at my past, then this is nothing for me,” he says.
Published on Oct 01, 2025