The Indian women's hockey team has raised Rs 20 lakh through an 18-day fitness challenge in an attempt to help the poor and migrant workers, whose livelihood has been affected due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown. The raised amount will be contributed to feeding more than 1,000 families. The team had launched an 18-day fitness challenge, starting April 17 to raise funds for the charity. The challenge concluded on May 3. While the challenge aimed to raise crowdfunding for the cause, the movement also encouraged people to use this opportunity to adapt to an active lifestyle during the nationwide lockdown.

Reflecting on the same, Indian team skipper Rani Rampal said the response was "really overwhelming" and thanked everyone who took part in the initiative.

"The response we have received was really overwhelming. People, especially Indian hockey lovers from across the globe took part in the challenge and contributed for the cause. On behalf of the Indian Women Team, I would like to thank everyone who took part in this initiative to help the poor," Rampal said in a statement.

"It was heartening to see many Hockey India Member Units, legends and former India hockey players show their support by taking part in this initiative and we are truly grateful," she added.

During the initiative, each day a player gave a new challenge and tagged 10 people on their social media handles to take up the challenge and donate Rs 100 to the fundraiser.

Indian team vice-captain Savita said she never anticipated such an "immense" outcome.

"Initially when we discussed this challenge with our Chief Coach and understood how online fundraiser works, we didn't think that the outcome would be so immense. But we saw people''s support grow day-by-day. Many of them would send us messages and patted our backs for taking this up and it encouraged us more," Savita said.

"We would also like to thank Hockey India and our Chief Coach Sjoerd Marijne and entire support staff for backing us in this initiative which we felt very strongly about because most of us in the team come from very difficult financial backgrounds," she added.