3 audacious sport enthusiasts start SmashReport to change how sport is viewed in India

Sport and Cricket are almost synonymous in India and any other sport vying for attention usually gets relegated a few rungs below cricket. There are enthusiasts for other sports but then in a nation of 1.3 billion, that has to be the case. In terms of Sports reporting, ESPN surely leads the way in India and is probably the only place, a user in general would go for news and analysis.

An effort to make a dent in this industry, 3 sport enthusiasts- Tarang Agrawal, Deepak Gaikwad and Krittika Shastry- launched the Smash Report in April 2013. Probably Bleacher Report inspired, SmashReport is an Interactive Sports Social Media; an open platform for sports fans, budding and professional writers to express their views and opinions revolving around sports.

Deepak and Tarang are IIT KGP graduates while Krittika is a graduate from KC college who all came back from their corporate jobs to follow their calling in sport. Deepak and Tarang had been thinking and planning about Smash Report for more than a year and have now launched with a clear focus to be a dominant mounthpiece in 4 main sports- Crciket, Football, F1 and Tennis.

Working on the model of crowdsourcing content, SmashReport launched with Cricket in April and then football. There are about 350 articles on the site currently (270+ in cricket) contributed by around 20 authors. Being a pure content play as of now, Tarang says that the SEO has shown some fruits really early on which is encouraging and they're getting close to 3000 views a day.

SportsKeeda is the dominant player in the market in India who also work on a similar model with a focus on all sports but recently branched out into eCommerce as well because a revenue model based completely on ads isn't viable at this stage in India. And hence the 'audacious' in the title. Smash Report intends to have other features like Crazyball to increase engagement but at the bottom line, it is all about how much audience they're able to pull in (repeatedly).

Bootstrapped and enough funds to take them for a year, the founders are concentrating on building the platform but alongside are also in talks with some investors to ramp up the operations. The eventual aim is to change how sports is viewed in India and have enough weight to change a few mindsets but to reach upto that level, there's a steep mountain to climb.

Check out SmashReport.