Media Release

Bangalore, Jul 28: Members from the Institute of Karate and Allied Arts (IKAA), headquartered in Mangalore, won the top honours at 'Beat Down 2014' a two-day national level martial arts extravaganza organised by Wakayama Karate-Do India at Sree Kanteerava Stadium, Bangalore recently.

As many as 22 students from the institute took part in this competition, led by senior instructors Sensei Derick Kishan (Malpe), Sensei Clement Sequeira (Puttur), Sensei Ashok Suvarna (Karkala) and Sensei Dayananthan (Bangalore). Over 2,500 competitors from all over India in different styles of Karate, Tae Kwon do, Wushu, Kung fu and so on participated in the competition.

IKAA bagged 18 prizes which included 16 individual events and two team events. In the team events, two teams from Banaswadi emerged victorious by bagging the first place in the men’s team Kumite and the third place in Black Belts Team Kumite.

The uniqueness of the winning team is that most of its members are Mangaloreans who moved to Bangalore a few years ago for pursuing their careers in different fields, but their passion for karate and martial arts still continues to be very strong. In spite of being occupied and busy with their full time jobs in multi-national companies, they make it a point to continue their training on a regular basis and not lose touch with the art they learnt in Mangalore during their college days.

Derick Kishan runs a full time karate institute in Bangalore while Clement Sequeira, Ashok Suvarna and Daya conduct karate classes during their free time and weekends, assisted by other black belts and senior instructors in Bangalore. They also conduct several self defense and safety awareness workshops and sessions for corporates, schools and general public specially focused towards women and children's safety.

The winners in the competition are as follows:

Team Kumite (Fight) Colour Belts - First Place

1. Deviprakash Bhandary
2. Suraj Acharya
3. Bhavish Kumar
4. Arkodeb Chakraborty
5. Merwin D’ Almeida

Team Kumite (Fight) Black Belts - Third Place

1. Clement Sequeira
2. Gopal V
3. Amarnath PV Shetty
4. Sunil Rai
5. Roshan Rao
6. Sukesh P Gowda

Individual Kata: First Place

1. Sanvi
2. Ayush

Individual Kumite (Fight)

First Place
1. Kushal Babu
2. Sharan Kumar
3. Shreyas
4. Deepika
5. Bhavish Kumar
6. Deviprakash Bhandary

Second Place

1. Merwin D’ Almeida
2. Roshan Rao
3. Sunil Rai
4. Sukesh P
5. Arkodeb Chakraborty

Third Place

1. Gopal V
2. Suraj Acharya
3. Madhusudhan