Aarush Wangoo: Surely ‘Rush’ is his Middle Name!

Originally Published on Isbund in July 2022

Aarush started a unique cricket coaching business, Evolve, that combines technology and sport to provide one-to-one coaching sessions. What’s even more unique about this story is that Aarush is 17 years old and started Evolve while studying for A-levels. Aarush first started playing cricket when he was 11 and has represented Surrey and Kent at county level and he now hopes to drive five figures in revenue in his first operating year

Aarush played a lot of cricket growing up, two deficiencies stood out to him. One was a lack of technology being utilised for coaching at grassroot levels, and the other was a lack of female participation. Aarush said his idea to start Evolve was in the “back of his mind” but it wasn’t until a conversation with his physiotherapist that he was inspired to take the leap to start the business. He told Aarush his son wasn’t receiving high level coaching at a young age. He saw this as an opportunity, and the thought of being able to contribute for the betterment of these causes inspired him to take action

Explaining why his training sessions are unique, Aarush says he has a website where he uploads videos of people training, where parents can later log in and see their child progress, 

Aarush offers personalised one-to-one coaching sessions to young people, both male and female. When asked the reasons why he wanted to pursue the goal of having girls involved in cricket, he’d said it was a combination of different events- from media coverage to witnessing this issue first hand at his college prior to starting his business. He is offering girls group sessions which he makes no profits from as well as having a professional cricketer attend and hold training sessions. He says, more and more clubs are now encouraging girls to play but before it only a few girls and obviously the girls will feel awkward and they’ll probably end up stopping playing. 

Since starting Evolve, Aarush said it has come with its challenges as he’s found that at the start not many parents were trusting of his ability due to his young age, however he was able to overcome this by showing the results he’s produced. Being 17 and having a parent put trust in you to coach their kids, especially for coaching important county and scholarship assessments was difficult at the start.. He says now the best part of it has been the way people come up to him and ask for advice about how to start their own thing.

Seeing so many willing to learn from him and being able to advise others and help kickstart their own ideas gives Aarush a lot of joy. Aarush’s aim is to help everyone ‘evolve’ into the best version of themselves  . At the moment, this may be in terms of their cricket, but he has strong aims to do the same for other areas, too, in the future.

You can get in touch with Aarush at https://www.evolvecricket.com/