Sports e commerce platform SportsNest.com on Sports, Market & Differentiation

In conversation with YourStory.in Sanjay shares with us his plans with SportsNest and what we as consumers can expect from the platform.

Sportsnest - what can the consumers expect from this e commerce platform?

SportsNest will help consumer in understand what equipment is needed for his/her usage. Since we have the professional sportsperson and domain experts on board, we source the best products at the optimal price and deliver the value to the consumer. SportsNest will act as a knowledge base for people to learn which equipment to buy for their proficiency on a particular sport

Tell us a bit about the differentiation of the platform and how you plan to sustain the differentiation in times to come? 

SportsNest will bring in a whole new dimension to the way people buy sports goods. We provide adequate data point for people to understand before they make a decision to buy. Also we are bringing in innovative methods to delivery and customer service keeping consumer requirement in mind. The way we package the products will help the consumer buy the goods and accessories required at one place.

Expert videos will be available for most of the high end SKUs which will be driving the decision making ability for the consumer. We have technical or service team who are well versed with each and every product for consumer to interact and then make a decision.

How do you see sports consumption online? ( any data point here would be great) 

Sport segment is the best bet for an online purchase because of the varied variety of vendors, products available and its impossible for a brick and mortar retail store to showcase. The challenge will be to eliminate the look and feel issue and SportsNest has worked out innovative methods to do this. We predict the market size to be around US 2Bn and want to be the leader in this space.

Tell us about your team (background) and how is your past roles helping in building Sportsnest? 

We are 3 directors including myself, Sandeep Kannambadi who heads the technology and also a former state table tennis player

Vijay Bharadwaj, who brings in immense knowledge on sports – former Indian test cricketer. Along with them, we have a panel of sports person who are working closely to build the knowledge on each and every sports category.

Investors on board?

Blume Ventures have invested in SportsNest. Karthik Reddy has been of great help from the day One and has shown great faith in our team.

Roadmap for the year ahead, what all can we expect to see on sportsnest next year?

SportsNest will change the entire landspace of buying in sports segment with a hugely differentiated customer service, optimized supply chain and technological innovation. SportsNest will bridge the gap between the offline and online model

Any detail on the traction, market validation?

SportsNest went live on b2b2c in Sept and traction has been immense. Has got most of the schools, institutions, academies and clubs on board. SportsNest beta online went live on 16th Dec and have already got 100 customers registered and delivered more than 50 orders in last 3 days. We have sold products ranging from Rs.100 to high end equipment like cross-trainers costing 30000/- online in 3 days.

Right now we have only the beta site which will be replaced with new UI and most of the innovative features in next 10 days

Also we would like to acknowledge Microsoft BizSpark programme for the support they extended in procuring and deploying Microsoft dynamics in the backend.