These startups are changing the game for sports lovers
It’s FIFA and Wimbledon time, and we decided to feature few sports-based startups that are striking it right this season.
As football fever kicks in, most of our conversation revolves around the sport. What also comes as a surprise to tennis and football fans is the FIFA World Cup finals and the Wimbledon’s men’s singles final fall on the same day (July 15). And the cricket lovers need not be disappointed, as they get to have their slice of cake with the ongoing India-England series.
YourStory decided to list seven such sports startups that are connecting sports and related activity.
Sports365: Sports365 is a sports and fitness products startup founded by G Chandra Sekhar Reddy and Aashutosh Chaudhari in May 2012. Tennis ace Mahesh Bhupati is a director of the startup. Sports365 also provides solutions for institutions like Premier sporting teams, clubs, academies, schools, colleges, companies and others. Their services include sports goods, sports merchandise design, development and distribution, sports infrastructure, events and consulting. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Sports365 is backed by Powerhouse Ventures and Zolon Ventures.
Fantain Sports: Founded in 2013 by three IT professionals - Anand Ramachandran, Vivek Venugopalan and Aravind Ramachandra - Fantain Sports is a fan relationship management and analytics startup. It helps sports companies use ‘Fan Data’ to increase revenue and predictability by using its ‘Fan Data Management Platform’. It also engages, collects and analyses ‘Fan Data’ from various sources, and provides actionable insights to customers. BookMyShow, owned by Big Tree entertainment, acquired the Chennai-based Fantain Sports in 2016.
Live Your Sports: After retiring from professional squash, Siddharth Suchde launched this ecommerce platform to fill the gap in the Indian market for an online platform that focuses solely on selling sporting goods. The company, founded in 2012, not only sells in bulk and retail, but also provides infrastructure building services – like Vollyeball courts. Besides their own website, LiveYourSports also sells on online marketplaces like Amazon India.
Sportskeeda: Porush Jain started Sportskeeda, where people could blog about sporting activities happening across the globe. Porush started Sportskeeda as a WordPress blog in October 2009. Today, the website has millions of unique user visits, with dozens of contributors who write sports-related content. It has live commentary on not just cricket, but hockey, football, and occasionally, badminton as well. The startup has raised $1.2 million in seed funding, and makes revenue from ads.
Playo: Run by TechMash Solutions Pvt Ltd, Playo is a sports community app that seeks to connect amateur athletes, venues, and vendors. Launched in 2015 by Gauravjeet Singh and Daanish Suhail, the bootstrapped startup helps users reserve spots to play various sports at nearby venues, find coaches, and connects with potential competitors of equal skill / calibre levels. It covers sports like football, tennis, basketball, table tennis, badminton, swimming, and cricket.
KOOH Sports: Sports education startup KOOH Sports is backed by TCS, HDFC Bank, PE fund Faering Capital, and others. KOOH, which stands for “Kids-out-of-home,” was started by Intelenet’s founders Susir Kumar and Prabhu Srinivasan in 2010 to get students become more active through in-school and professional sports training programmes.
KOOH Sports claimed to have worked with more than two lakh kids across 200+ schools, and 100+ academies in India and UAE.
Groundwala: GW Sports App (formerly Groundwala) claims to be India’s first sports facility booking platform, which helps sports enthusiasts find opponents/partners with similar skills to play with. GW Sports App has its presence in Hyderabad, Pune and Gurugram.
This app makes it easy to find sports venues and register for sports events too. The platform does a monthly audit of venues to ensure only the top-notch ones are listed on its platform.
