Beijing: India's Akhil Kumar won his bout against Ali Hallab of France to enter the round of 16 in the bantamweight (54kg) category on Tuesday.
Akhil won the four-round match 12-5 at the Workers' Gymnasium to keep the hopes of a medal alive.
The French boxer started on a bright note taking a two-point lead but Akhil came back strongly midway through the first round to establish his domination.
After leading 4-2 in the first round, Akhil consolidated his lead and in the second opened a huge gap of 8-3.
From then on it was just a formality as Ali failed to past Akhil's defence to score.
He will now take on 2007 world champion Sergey Vodopyanov in the pre-quarters.
Akhil was the gold medallist at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games and had to battle his way back from injury to clinch the Olympic qualification along with the title of the best boxer in Asia.
Earlier, Jitender Kumar pummelled his Turkish opponent Ulas Furkan Memis in less than three rounds to storm into the flyweight pre-quarterfinals of the boxing competition.
Jitender, who was making his Olympic debut, led 12-3 before Memis threw in the towel just a few seconds into the third round of the lopsided bout.
The Asian Championship bronze medallist was aggressive from the word go and launched a flurry of straight punches on Memis, who was left scurrying for cover.
Jitender now meets Tulashboy Doniyorov of Uzbekistan.
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