Fight Club India

the problem is structural.
the solution is social.

In India, 72.9% of all suicide deaths are men. This is not a clinical failure. It is a cultural one. Boys are not taught emotional literacy. They are taught silence, anger, and avoidance instead. The gap between what men feel and what they are allowed to express does not stay private. It shows up in relationships, families, workplaces, and across generations.

When men take active ownership of their mental health, the impact ripples outward to their partners, families, communities, and workplaces, creating change that is generational.

Fight Club exists to make that possible. We are socialising men's mental health conversations in ways that have never been done before. In a country like ours, we aim to be quietly revolutionary.

fight club india foundation · bangalore · fightclubindia.org
72.9%
of all suicide deaths in India are men
NCRB, 2023
₹1.1 lakh crore
annual cost of poor mental health to Indian employers
Deloitte India, 2022
29.5%
of EAP calls made by men, vs 56% by women
SHRM / Spill

ground zero. what one year looks like.

Fight Club launched in Bangalore in January 2025 as a live social experiment. The question at the centre of it: if you bring men together to talk, can you create a space where they feel safe enough to be emotionally honest with each other? From the very first round table, the answer was yes. What followed was a year of building, steadily, deliberately, in the spaces where men already were.

15
round tables held
180+
men engaged across active events
60%
return rate. Men who came once came back
20%
of active event participants are women (deliberate. Miles & Minds is co-gender)
50
paying audience at Generations Debate pilot, Bangalore, April 2026
Jan 2026
incorporated as a Section 8 NFP

Round tables have covered masculinity, money, loneliness, comparison, emotional expression, gender scripts, and third spaces. Participants range from 21 to 45. The 60% return rate is the clearest signal: these sessions are filling a gap that men did not know they needed filled until they walked into one.

The Generations Debate brought Gen Z and Millennial men into the same room to argue three propositions about masculinity and mental health in front of a paying audience. It was the first time FC moved from intimate peer conversation to a public research format. It worked. Now we build on it.

what's in motion.

Six workstreams. All running simultaneously. Each one needs a different kind of support.

Fight Club is not building one thing. It is building a system, a set of interlocking programmes, events, and community structures that work together to shift how men in India relate to their own mental health. The six workstreams below are all active. Some need brand partners. Some need network introductions. Some need funding. Most need all three.

01

expanding community reach.

Scaling round tables and sport events as a city-wide presence.

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02

generations.

A live debate series on masculinity, built for research and scale.

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03

drinks with bro.

Jeet Kapoor hosts founders. Non-alcoholic drinks. Honest conversation. Filmed.

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the vision

Right now FC runs out of a single city, in spaces it finds and books session by session. The next phase is building a distributed network of partner hosts, venues, clubs, communities, and sport organisations across Bangalore, and eventually across cities, that become regular FC homes. The goal is a man in any part of Bangalore being able to find an FC round table or a Miles & Minds active event within reach, without FC having to own or manage every space.

what this looks like

  • Venue partners who host monthly FC round tables in their space
  • Sport and fitness communities who co-run Miles & Minds active sessions
  • Community organisations whose members become a natural FC audience
  • A consistent FC presence in neighbourhoods, not just one-off events

support needed

Connections to venue owners, club operators, sport communities, and community organisers who want to be part of something that genuinely serves the men in their network. If you run a space or know people who do, this is where you come in.

what's been proven

Piloted in Bangalore, April 2026. Eight debaters, four Gen Z, four Millennial, argued three propositions about how masculinity and mental health intersect across generations, in front of 50 paying audience members with professional two-camera production. A validated research instrument ran alongside it, measuring both personal attitudes and perceptions of what other men think. The data is clean. The format worked.

the three propositions debated

  • Therapy-speak has made men better at talking about feelings and worse at actually having them
  • The manosphere exists because Millennials failed to give Gen Z men something better
  • Men today know more about mental health and are lonelier than any generation before them

where it goes

Multi-city expansion is the plan. Bangalore next, then Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad. Universities are the target venue, large enough for scale, the right demographic concentration, and a natural audience for the research dimension. The publishing trajectory is toward a working paper and peer-reviewed publication, with Iti Bhargava as research partner.

support needed

  • University connections and large venue networks in target cities
  • City connectors in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad who can open doors
  • Production and research sponsorship
  • Introductions to academics and institutional research partners

the format

A filmed conversation series hosted by Jeet Kapoor, a familiar face to Bangalore's founder and creator community. Each episode brings one or two founders to a venue where culture already lives, over non-alcoholic drinks, for an honest conversation about the stuff that does not usually come up in founder content. Not productivity hacks. Not growth metrics. The actual interior experience of building something, and what it costs.

why this format

The sober setting is deliberate. Fight Club's position is that vulnerability and a good time are not opposites, and that the most interesting conversations happen when the drinks are not doing the emotional work. Season 1 is six episodes. The commitment evolves with each season.

why founders

Founders carry a specific kind of pressure that rarely gets named in public. They are the ones other people rely on. They are not supposed to not know what to do. Putting that experience on camera, in a peer setting, with someone the community already trusts, creates social permission for other men watching to recognise themselves in it.

support needed

Brand partnership to fund production and Jeet's fee. Drix and Local Ferment Co. are the model, drinks brands whose product is already placed in the venues where this gets shot. Venue access in Bangalore. Founder introductions for Season 1 guests.

04

workplace.

FC's peer-led model, brought inside companies.

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05

schools.

Emotional literacy for boys, starting where it should have always started.

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06

fc approved.

A vetted directory of therapists who understand men's mental health.

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the problem this solves

Men use EAPs at roughly half the rate of women. The format does not work for them, opt-in, individual, clinical in framing. Meanwhile the costs of poor male mental health in the workplace are not invisible: they show up as leadership friction, disengagement, presenteeism, and a team culture that runs on pressure without ever naming it. Most organisations know this. Very few have a programme designed around how men actually engage.

what the programme looks like

  • Monthly male-only round tables, 90 minutes, peer-led, confidential
  • Bi-monthly Miles & Minds active sessions, mixed-gender, low barrier
  • HR Engagement Lead model: FC trains someone inside the organisation to run sessions internally, so the programme is not dependent on external facilitation every time
  • Pulse check: a validated anonymous survey tool deployed post-session, generating anonymised data for the organisation over time

what organisations get

A programme that men actually use. Measurable data on psychological safety and emotional literacy over time. A leadership culture that is more honest about pressure, earlier. FC is upstream mental health support, the intervention that makes men willing to seek help when they need it, before the crisis arrives.

support needed

Introductions to CHROs and L&D heads willing to pilot. The discovery conversation is complimentary and scoped to the organisation. FC works with companies that want something that will actually land with their men, not a wellbeing checkbox.

the gap

In India's patriarchal structure, emotional education for boys barely exists. They are taught to rely on silence, anger, or avoidance. The research on what this produces is not subtle, it shows up decades later in the data FC was built to address. The most effective point to intervene is not in adulthood. It is in school.

what FC has built

A full programme designed for boys in schools, focused on emotional literacy, peer conversation, and the language to name what they are experiencing. The curriculum is ready. The facilitation model is tested. What is missing is the network of school leadership willing to say yes to something new.

support needed

School heads willing to pilot in Bangalore and beyond. This workstream moves on network, not funding. If you have a relationship with school leadership, principals, trustees, education boards, that is the door FC needs opened.

the problem

Men who are ready to seek help often stop at the first practical question: who do I actually go to? The general therapist directory does not answer that. Men want to know that the person on the other side understands what it feels like to be a man who has been told not to feel things, not just clinically, but culturally. That gap is what FC Approved is designed to fill.

what it is

A curated, published directory of mental health professionals who have been assessed against FC's standards for working specifically with men. Not a referral platform. Not a general listing. A genuine endorsement, with a vetting process behind it, that men can trust when they are ready to take the next step.

support needed

Connections to mental health professionals who work with men and would meet a high bar. Institutional credibility partners who want to be associated with a standard that serves men better. If you know therapists, psychologists, or clinical organisations whose work aligns with this, the introduction matters.

how to be part of this.

FC is not looking for passive supporters. The people who move this forward are the ones who open doors, make introductions, and put their name behind something they believe in. There are three ways to be part of it.

brand
⌄

FC builds culture, not campaigns. If your brand wants to be present in spaces where men are having real conversations, not performing wellness, but actually doing the work, this is where it happens. Drinks with Bro is the first vehicle. More formats are coming. The ask is production partnership and genuine alignment, not logo placement. The brands that fit here are the ones that understand their audience well enough to know this matters.

network
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The most valuable thing most people in this room can offer is an introduction. School heads willing to pilot a programme. University decision-makers who can open venues. CHROs who want to pilot something real. Therapists and psychologists who work well with men. City connectors in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad who know who needs to know about FC. Founders who should be in the room. Venue owners who want to host something that matters. If you know someone who should know FC, that is the contribution.

funding and investment
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FC is a Section 8 NFP and operates as social infrastructure for men's mental health in India. CSR partnerships are welcome from organisations whose commitment to employee and community wellbeing is genuine. So is impact investment from those who see men's mental health as a long-term bet on healthier families, workplaces, and communities. We are transparent about how money moves, the Ground Zero Report documents every rupee. The conversation starts with what you are trying to do, not what FC needs.

fight club india foundation

fightclubindia.org

If this landed, let's talk. FC is at an early stage with clear direction and real proof of concept. The right conversations now shape what the next phase looks like.

get in touch