Adille Sumariwalla

Adille Sumariwalla (born 1 January 1958) is an Indian Parsi athlete and entrepreneur, popular for representing India at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Sumariwalla competed as a 100m runner in several international competitions and at the Olympics. Currently, he is the president of the Athletics Federation of India, and was elected as one of the members of council of IAAF at its 50th congress, thus becoming the first Indian to do so. He is also an entrepreneur and owns many media businesses in India, after tenures at some media companies including the American Media Company.

Sumariwalla has been an athlete since his school days. He had set the men's 200m inter college record, at a mere 22.2 seconds and held it for 35 years, until recently Gaurang Amre broke the record, clocking at 21.7 seconds. He expressed gladness as therecord was broken, but at the same time expressed concern over the time taken to break the record, quoting these records should be broken "every two or three years". He has won the national title in 100m sprint 11 times. Sumariwalla represented India at the 1980 summer olympics as a hundred-meter sprinter, in which he stood seventh in round one. He has been the Chef-de-Mission for the Indian contingent, for the 2014 Asian Games in Korea. Sumariwalla is of the opinion that there has been great increase in infrastructure for sports by the government in recent years, and has quoted that "The day is not far when India can expect an Olympics Medal in Athletics".

Apart from athletics, Sumariwalla has been a part of many media businesses and corporations. He started his professional career with Tata Engineering and locomotive co. (now Tata Motors). He worked there for 15 years in various domains, after which he was appointed as the founding CEO of The Asian Age in 1994. He has since worked with many other corporations, notably Mid Day Multimedia and Clear Channel. He was responsible for setting up the outdoor division at Mid Day in 1997, which then merged its tasks with Clear Channel. After leaving Clear Channel, after serving eight years as a chairman and managing director, he left the company and has later been on the board of Next Media Works and SE TransStadia Ltd. He is also a co-founder of Interspace Communications.