10Club forays into the sports category with acquisition of sports and fitness equipment brand Skudgear

After a little over a week, Bengaluru-based 10Club has announced its second acquisition - sports and fitness equipment brand Skudgear - and marked an entry into the sports category.

Prior to this, 10Club announced the acquisition of baby products selling brand My Newborn.

Founded in 2020 by Bhavna Suresh, Joel Ayala, and Deepak Nair, 10Club is a new-age ecommerce startup that acquires, operates, and helps digitally native businesses to scale up.  

This development comes after 10Club raised $40 million in seed funding earlier in June. It is aimed at building a valuable portfolio and elevating the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country by offering ecommerce sellers a financial exit and the right kind of resources to help them scale the businesses. 

Hyderabad-based Skudgear was founded by brothers Raviteja Visakoti and Rithish Visakoti from a single bedroom flat with one employee. Four years later today Skudgear operates out of a 2,500 sq. ft. warehouse with over 400 SKUs on Amazon.

However, the official statement revealed that business came to standstill amid the pandemic as Skudgear’s supply from China dried up.

As a part of this acquisition deal, 10Club will now work with Raviteja to build operational excellence with robust systems for sourcing and forecasting, scaling volumes, digitising warehouse operations, channel expansion, and identifying potential areas of growth to expand the product portfolio. 

“Ravi is an extremely passionate young entrepreneur who uses his analytical acumen and a deep understanding of consumer preferences to dominate the category he operates in. His vision of building a large business in the sports and fitness space is perfectly aligned to what we at 10Club have outlined for this exciting category. We are extremely excited to have Ravi and his team to anchor this category along with the other acquisitions we have planned in the coming months,” said Deepak Nair, Co-Founder and COO, 10Club.

With this, Raviteja will now join the 10Club team full time as an entrepreneur in residence with an aim to grow and lead Skudgear to become a $100 million brand. 

Speaking about the development, Raviteja said, “Skudgear is where it is today, because of the agility we built into the fundamentals of the business. We have been fearless when it came to experimentation, quick to double down on what worked, and remove what didn’t. I am glad to see that 10Club operates with the same philosophy and we believe the team at 10Club will grow the business exactly the way we would have.”