She halts Gurgaon traffic on weekends; reclaims public space for fitness activities

Gurgaon, touted as the future city of India, surprisingly falls short when it comes to sporting facilities and infrastructure. Drawing attention to India’s lack of sporting culture, Dhruv Swamini brings traffic to a halt in Gurgaon every Sunday. A four km stretch of road is cordoned off for traffic and used only for fitness activities like cycling, running, skating and other participatory games. This first-ever ‘Open Streets’ project to claim public spaces will continue till March 2014.Dhruv is the one of the founders of the India chapter of DUPLAYS (a UAE-based company) that strives to build a culture for recreational sports in Gurgaon. Dhruv hails from Chandausi (a small town in UP), and completed her engineering degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Delhi followed by an MBA from INSEAD. A former consultant with McKinsey, Dhruv is passionate about her new venture.

“For some reason, entrepreneurship is glorified in our times. The truth is that you live through a lot of challenges in a startup like living on zero-salary and the uncertainty, doing everything yourself , dealing with complaints when you thought you had delivered a perfect solution to the client and so on. At times like these, only passion and love for your work can get you through,” she claims.

To help her manage her entrepreneurial life, Dhruv has learnt to prioritize. “There will always be 20 things that will need to be done, and you can only do so many. You will have to decide which are the must-dos and which can be kept aside for later,” she says. “The one that I value the most (which I borrowed from my former firm McKinsey) is the obligation to dissent – express if you have a different opinion.

YourStory spoke to Dhruv about her startup and how she hopes to bring about a change in India’s sports culture. Excerpts from the interview.

YS: What led you to start the India chapter of DUPLAYs?

DS: I had grown up playing different sports during my boarding school days, and missed being able to do so when I started my work life. I realized it was because we did not have enough sports facility and also because I did not know like-minded people who I could play with. One weekend, I decided to try out this concept of ‘organized’ sports by collecting a bunch of friends and colleagues for basketball. Word spread fast on facebook about our basketball group. From the enthusiastic response I knew I was looking at a potential market. I decided to partner with DUPLAYS (a UAE-based company) to launch its India chapter.

The difficulties in pursuing recreational sports for working professionals are lack of sports facility and not being able to connect with like-minded people. For lack of public sports infrastructure in Gurgaon, we tie up with private schools and private sports facilities. Through our website and facebook, we connect people with similar sports interests and skill levels.

YS: What drives you as an individual and as an entrepreneur?

DS: Having cribbed a lot about lack of sporting culture in India, I am very proud to be part of driving a change. Proud that we are helping people play more regularly and in the process fostering a culture for health and fitness. I want to make sure that people start associating sports as a form of recreation, something like going for a movie or shopping or eating out.

What really keeps me going is the feedback we get from people. We often hear how much they are enjoying playing after such a long break and how it has made their weekends more exciting. Most people, like me, played last in school or college.

YS: How has the experience been so far?

DS: I have learnt a lot about people and doing business. We have about 2,500 people registered and playing with us in Gurgaon. We organize various activities (friendly one-hour games, leagues/ tournaments, coaching) in six sports that include basketball, football, tennis, squash, badminton and TT. Yes, we don’t organize cricket! Our ‘Open Streets’ event is attracting lot of people.

Having said that, we also face some challenges, primarily due to lack of professional people to manage facilities and events, but we hope that as we grow we will be able to tie up with bigger facilities which are more professional.

YS: Are you bootstrapped? If yes, what are your plans for raising funds?

DS: We received initial funds from DUPLAYS and are now looking at breaking even soon. We will look to raise funds when we launch in another city which could be sometime this year.

YS: Tell us a little bit about the founding team and how you came together?

DS: Soubir Dutta and I are the founding members. As I started organizing basketball games initially, people asked me do the same for football. Soubir Dutta was one of the regulars at the football games and would help organize it for me when I was unavailable. Once over coffee, we talked about collaborating and discussed our business plan. Two months later he left his marketing job at Adidas and joined me.

What else can be done to build a sporting culture in India? We would like to hear your suggestions. Do comment.