Minakshi Hooda’s journey to Boxing Worlds medal: How auto-driver father put her on the road to success – ‘Meri chhori duniya jeetegi’

“Major part of my life has been spent driving an auto-rickshaw. Earlier, I would get one on rent and some years ago, I got this second-hand auto-rickshaw for Rs 90,000 from the cash awards Minakshi got over the years and also our family savings,” says an emotional Srikrishan to The Indian Express. The family’s hard toil to make ends meet became easier for the Hoodas after Minakshi joined Indo Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) as a constable.

On her day of glory, she spoke about the role her parents have played in her journey. “Whether my father drove a rented auto-rickshaw or a second-hand one, I always saw them giving their best and I should also give my best. Yes, I did not have my own gloves or could not afford boxing shoes, but then I had the belief to give my best, whether it was training or in the boxing ring, and my parents as well coach Vijay Hooda did whatever they could to make my dreams come true. The aim is to win the gold here and an Olympic medal one day for India,” Minakshi tells The Indian Express from Liverpool.

Minakshi (48 kg) in action at the World Boxing Championships 2025, Liverpool (World Boxing)

While Srikrishan is excited about his daughter’s boxing career now, it wasn’t always the case. As a teenager, Minakshi would see her schoolmates take up boxing under coach Vijay Hooda and that would ignite her interest in the sport. She would pester her mother Sunita Devi to allow her to follow her friends, but there was opposition at home. The household of six – three sisters and one son – couldn’t afford the extra cost that boxing would entail.

“We don’t have any land and we stayed in an old house in the village at that time. When Minakshi told us about going to the boxing classes, the only thought that came to our mind was that we could not support her training or even basic equipment. Coach Hooda would assure my husband that he would take care of all the training and then only we agreed,” says the mother.

However, there were other obstacles too. Relatives or neigbhours would judge Minakshi’s parents for allowing her to take up a contact sport. “They would tell us not to send our girl for boxing as it might injure her face. There were also those who said – ‘How do you allow your daughter to wear shorts?’,” says Sunita.

It helped that the academy where Minakshi trained had the 2017 World Youth Champion Jyoti Gulia and international medallist Shikhsha Narwal. The training facility was basic, the ring was on the stage of the hall. But that didn’t come in the way of Minakshi’s phenomenal rise as a boxer.

Hooda, who learnt about boxing by watching YouTube videos, remembers the day Minakshi came to his academy. “When Meenakshi came, her weight was a bit less but her muscle strength was very good. She would come in basic shoes, which her father got her on the first day and I remember how she would display very swift foot movement against boxers 1-2 years older than her. Even when she did not have her own gloves, she had the power to deliver punches,” coach Hooda tells this daily. He goes on to add that Minakshi’s height gives her an edge.

Chief national coach Dr D Chandralal too speaks about Minakshi’s reach. “Minakshi is one of the tallest boxers in the 48kg division. She is basically a long-distance boxer but that also meant that she could not adjust well to the present scoring system early in her career. With time, we have worked on her upper cuts and left hook apart from the combination of right straight left hook and then left upper cut against shorter boxers too, which used to trouble her earlier,” he says.

Nitin Sharma is an Assistant Editor with the sports team of The Indian Express. Based out of Chandigarh, Nitin works with the print sports desk while also breaking news stories for the online sports team. A Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award recipient for the year 2017 for his story ‘Harmans of Moga’, Nitin has also been a two-time recipient of the UNFPA-supported Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity for the years 2022 and 2023 respectively. Nitin mainly covers Olympics sports disciplines with his main interests in shooting, boxing, wrestling, athletics and much more. The last 17 years with The Indian Express has seen him unearthing stories across India from as far as Andaman and Nicobar to the North East. Nitin also covers cricket apart from women’s cricket with a keen interest. Nitin has covered events like the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the 2011 ODI World Cup, 2016 T20 World Cup and the 2017 AIBA World Youth Boxing Championships. An alumnus of School of Communication Studies, Panjab University, from where he completed his Masters in Mass Communications degree, Nitin has been an avid quizzer too. A Guru Nanak Dev University Colour holder, Nitin’s interest in quizzing began in the town of Talwara Township, a small town near the Punjab-Himachal Pradesh border. When not reporting, Nitin's interests lie in discovering new treks in the mountains or spending time near the river Beas at his hometown. ... Read More

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