ABJJF India — Agrya Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation of India
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu changes people.
We have watched it happen on the mat at Knots & Collar for nearly five years — in the child who arrived shy and left with something unshakeable, in the woman who came looking for self-defence and found something far larger, in the adult who thought they were too old to start something new and discovered they were not.
The question we kept returning to was this: if the mat can do this for people who choose to walk through our door, what can it do for people who have never had that choice?
ABJJF India is the answer we are building.
WHAT IS ABJJF INDIA?
Agrya Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation of India — ABJJF India — is a registered Section 8 non-profit organisation founded in 2026 by Professor Binish Sukhija.
Agrya is a Sanskrit word meaning the finest — reflecting the conviction that every person, regardless of background or circumstance, deserves access to the finest tools available for building confidence, capability, and resilience.
ABJJF India exists to take Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu beyond the walls of the studio and into communities that need it most — as a structured, evidence-based tool for social impact.
The organisation is legally independent of Knots & Collar. It operates under its own governance, maintains its own accounts, and is accountable to its own compliance framework as a registered Section 8 entity. Its work is funded independently through grants, CSR partnerships, and institutional donors — not through Knots & Collar's commercial operations.
What connects ABJJF India to Knots & Collar is not financial — it is human. The knowledge base, the instructors, the curriculum, and the community of Knots & Collar are the source from which ABJJF India draws its technical expertise. Members of the Knots & Collar community volunteer their time, skills, and energy in support of ABJJF India's programmes. This voluntary relationship is the backbone of what we are building.
WHY BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU FOR SOCIAL IMPACT?
This is the question we are most often asked — and it deserves a direct answer.
BJJ is not an obvious choice for social impact work. It is a martial art, not a classroom programme. It requires physical contact. It involves controlled conflict. These qualities, which make it powerful, also make it seem unlikely as a vehicle for education, empowerment, or community development.
The evidence says otherwise.
For women's safety and empowerment: BJJ teaches practical, pressure-tested self-defence that works regardless of size differential — which is precisely why it was designed. A woman who has trained in BJJ has real, repeatable capability to protect herself in a physical confrontation with a larger attacker. This is not theoretical. It is the mechanical reality of a leverage-based grappling system. Beyond the physical capability, consistent BJJ training produces measurable improvements in self-confidence, boundary-setting, and comfort with physical presence — qualities that extend far beyond the mat.
For children's development: The mat is one of the most complete developmental environments available to children. It demands focus, emotional regulation, respect for others, and the willingness to face difficulty without collapsing. It builds genuine confidence — not the performed confidence of praise, but the earned confidence of repeated achievement against real challenge. Research on martial arts and child development consistently shows improvements in academic performance, social behaviour, and emotional resilience. BJJ, with its emphasis on technique over strength and its culture of mutual respect, produces these outcomes with particular consistency.
For community building: BJJ academies create unusual communities — diverse, mutually accountable, and held together not by shared background but by shared practice. The mat does not distinguish by caste, income, or credential. Everyone starts as a white belt. Everyone earns their progress through the same consistent, honest work. This democratic quality makes BJJ a genuinely useful community-building tool in contexts where other hierarchies make genuine connection difficult.
OUR PROGRAMMES
ABJJF India currently operates two flagship programmes:
PROJECT SASHAKTI
BJJ-Based Women's Self-Defence — Train the Trainer
Sashakti means empowerment.
Project Sashakti is a structured Train-the-Trainer programme that teaches women to teach women. Rather than delivering individual self-defence sessions that end when the instructor leaves, Sashakti builds local capacity — training women from within communities as certified instructors who can continue delivering the programme independently.
The curriculum draws from BJJ's ground-fighting system — the most practical available for real-world self-defence situations where size differential is real and the confrontation has already reached physical contact. It is adapted for delivery without specialised equipment, in community spaces, by instructors with structured certification rather than deep martial arts backgrounds.
The Train-the-Trainer model means that a single Sashakti programme investment multiplies. One cohort of trained instructors produces ongoing classes in their communities, trains the next cohort of instructors, and sustains the programme without continued external delivery.
Who this serves: Women and girls in underserved communities, corporate environments, educational institutions, and any organisation seeking structured, scalable women's self-defence capability.
Partnership model: Project Sashakti is available as a CSR partnership, institutional programme, or grant-funded initiative. Programme costs cover curriculum delivery, instructor certification, materials, and ongoing quality assurance. All delivery is conducted by ABJJF India independently of Knots & Collar's commercial operations.
NEURAL FLOW
BJJ-Based Cognitive Development for Children
Neural Flow is built on a specific and evidence-supported insight: the problem-solving demands of BJJ — reading an opponent's movement, anticipating positional changes, finding solutions under physical pressure — activate and develop the same cognitive pathways that govern academic and social intelligence.
The programme brings structured BJJ movement and positional play into educational settings and community contexts as a cognitive development tool. It is not standard martial arts instruction — it is a curriculum specifically designed to produce measurable outcomes in focus, working memory, spatial reasoning, and emotional regulation through the vehicle of BJJ-based movement and game play.
Neural Flow is designed for delivery in schools, community centres, and after-school programmes. It does not require a mat, a Gi, or any prior physical education infrastructure. It requires trained instructors, a clear space, and children who are ready to play.
Who this serves: Schools and educational institutions, NGOs and community programmes focused on child development, corporate foundations with children's education mandates, and government bodies focused on holistic child development outcomes.
Partnership model: Neural Flow is available as a school programme, NGO collaboration, or CSR initiative. ABJJF India provides curriculum, instructor training, delivery, and outcome measurement.
THE VOLUNTEER COMMUNITY
ABJJF India does not have paid staff in the conventional sense. What it has is a community of people who believe that the art they practice has more to give than a studio can contain.
The practitioners, instructors, and members of Knots & Collar's training community are the volunteer backbone of ABJJF India. They give their time, their skills, and their presence to ABJJF India's programmes because they have experienced firsthand what BJJ does for a person — and they want that experience to reach further.
This volunteer model is both a financial efficiency and a reflection of what ABJJF India is. It is not an organisation with a mission statement and a staff directory. It is a community with a conviction, acting on it.
Volunteering with ABJJF India is open to all members of the Knots & Collar community. If you train here and you want to be part of the social impact work, speak to Professor Binish Sukhija directly.
THE FOUNDER
Professor Binish Sukhija is a BJJ black belt under the De La Riva lineage, founder of Knots & Collar, and the founder of ABJJF India.
The conviction behind ABJJF India comes from nearly 17 years on the mat — from having taught Jiu-Jitsu to everyone from elite paramilitary forces to children in underserved communities, and from having watched consistently what genuine, well-taught BJJ does to a person regardless of where they start.
Knots & Collar was built to create the finest possible training environment for people who choose to seek it out. ABJJF India was founded because some of the people who need what BJJ offers most are not yet in a position to seek it out. The two organisations are distinct. The conviction that drives them is the same.
A NOTE ON GOVERNANCE AND TRANSPARENCY
We want to be clear about how ABJJF India and Knots & Collar relate to each other — because clarity here is important to us and to the partners we work with.
ABJJF India is a registered Section 8 non-profit. It maintains its own accounts, its own governance structure, and its own compliance obligations. It does not receive funding from Knots & Collar's commercial operations, and Knots & Collar does not benefit financially from ABJJF India's programmes.
The connection is human, not financial. Professor Binish Sukhija founded both organisations. Members of the Knots & Collar community volunteer with ABJJF India. The technical knowledge base — the BJJ curriculum, the instructor training methodology, the programme design — flows from Knots & Collar's expertise to ABJJF India's programmes through this voluntary relationship.
This page exists on the Knots & Collar website because ABJJF India is in its early stages of building an independent digital presence. Hosting this information here is a practical decision during a transitional period, not a structural conflation of the two organisations.
We work honestly and we work wholeheartedly. We welcome questions about governance, programme delivery, and how we work.
PARTNER WITH ABJJF INDIA
ABJJF India is actively seeking partnerships with:
Corporate partners — organisations with CSR mandates focused on women's empowerment, child development, education, or community welfare. Project Sashakti and Neural Flow are ready-to-deploy programmes with clear outcome frameworks.
Institutional funders and grant bodies — ABJJF India is registered and compliant as a Section 8 non-profit, eligible for CSR contributions under the Companies Act, 2013.
NGOs and community organisations — Collaboration on programme delivery in communities where your organisation already has reach and relationships.
Government bodies — Partnership on initiatives aligned with national priorities in women's safety, child development, and community resilience.
Individual donors and volunteers — If you believe in what we are building and want to contribute your time, resources, or network, we welcome that conversation.
GET IN TOUCH
To discuss partnership, programme delivery, or volunteering with ABJJF India:
Professor Binish Sukhija Founder, ABJJF India Contact via Knots & Collar → 📞 +91-9717956687
ABJJF India — Agrya Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation of India — is a registered Section 8 non-profit organisation. All ABJJF India programmes are delivered and funded independently of Knots & Collar's commercial operations.