Sports Discovery App Sportido Raises Funding led by Inflection Point Ventures and SucSEED Venture Partners

Noida-based Sports discovery app Sportido secures its second round of funding led by Inflection Point Ventures and SucSEED Venture Partners

Sportido, a sports discovery platform, seeks to solve the problem of majority of India’s urban adult population who want to play a sport but find it hard to gather people or lack access to good sports facilities. Sportido helps its users connect with like-minded people nearby and book venues online to play their sport. The start-up also provides its partner-venues with a facility management app (called ‘Charge by Sportido’) that enables them to track bookings and manage their customers and inventory. 

Founded by Neeraj Aggarwala (who had previously co-founded Easypolicy) and Akhil Ramachandran, Sportido aims to grow the ecosystem for sports and fitness enthusiasts. According to Neeraj, “The entire ecosystem is growing rapidly to cater to the increasing demand for Sports and Fitness. We have witnessed a 7x growth in the number of Sports facilities in just the last 3 years and Sportido’s platform helps us sit in the driver’s seat of this ecosystem.”

Since its previous fundraise in Oct 2018, Sportido has grown to 5 cities and their monthly sales have grown over 30x. Akhil Ramachandran mentions that “this growth is primarily due to stickiness of users and high repeat transactions. The average user has transacted 7 times in the last 6 months, which gives us a very high customer lifetime value.” On funding from IP Ventures Neeraj says, “This new round of investment will help Sportido in product enhancement and expanding to new cities.”

[caption id="attachment_139031" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Neeraj Aggarwala[/caption]

IP Ventures angel investor Mayank Jain, speaking on his investment in the start-up said, “Sportido is doing an amazing job in making these facilities accessible and developing the ecosystem so that it’s easy for common people to pursue sports. Sports is necessary for physical and mental fitness and a must for society as a whole.” Further, upon his experience with IP Ventures he expressed, “IPV has been a great learning experience for me. I’m impressed by the professionalism and approach in identifying, selecting and mentoring start-ups."

A combination of social networking and service-aggregation, Sportido helps its users discover places to play any sport with like-minded people around them, explore new sports, participate in events, and even find deals on clubs and gyms nearby. 

The app also enables its users to create their own event and invite participation from other users nearby who are interested in the same sport. The Company’s mission is to inspire healthier and happier communities by helping them rediscover the joy of Sport.

IP Ventures was founded in 2017 by a group of accomplished CXOs who come with rich experience in the start-up ecosystem, either as co-founders themselves or by leading their organizations through various stages of funding. Their expertise lies not only in financial aspects such as private equity and venture capital but also in business strategy, expansion and risk mitigation.

Location Based Sporting App Sportido Raises Funding from Sumpoorna Group

Sportido, a location-based sporting app that connects sports and fitness enthusiasts to other players, venues and events, has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Sumpoorna Group, a holistic investment advisory syndicate that operates across verticals of retail, domestic and foreign institutional investors. This initial investment has fuelled product development, and user acquisition campaigns. Currently active in Delhi-NCR since August 2016, Sportido has 2000+ downloads. Targeting a growth of 10X in the next 12 months, Sportido plans to expand to Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad by the end of 2017 and go international by the end of 2018. To accelerate its next wave of growth, Sportido is in active talks with investors to raise funding.

Founded in August 2015 by Neeraj Aggarwala, Non-Executive Founder of Sportido and Founder & Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Easypolicy.com, Vishal Lunia, Co-Founder & CEO and Akhil R, Co-Founder and Product Head, Sportido focuses on creating a hyper-local ecosystem for sports and fitness enthusiasts. Based on factors such as location of the users, their preferred activity whether sports or fitness, their network and more, the app recommends the most relevant information customised for each user. These features make the discovery of players, services and events easier for users, while also making the news feed more engaging for the users, thereby improving retention. The App enables users to book sports venues like courts or grounds, fitness services like gyms and events like treks, marathons or tournaments.

Available on iOS and Android phones, users can reserve spots at nearby sports venues, team up with like-minded players, and know about sporting activities happening in their vicinity.

Presently, the app enables booking of sports & fitness activities from a base of 150 partnerships and more than 1200 service providers. The user can also create events and find people for more than 700+ sports via the app. One can also find range of services for different sports including skydiving, skating, swimming, martial arts and much more.

Speaking on his investment in Sportido, Rahul Yadav, Managing Director - Sumpoorna Group said “While cricket has always caught our fancy, the recent rise of sports leagues across football, tennis, kabaddi and other sports, is encouraging Indians to discover their enthusiasm for different sports, games and related activities. They are now making their way into the fields to play their own game, and looking to align with like-minded people to do so as well. Sportido is ideally poised to be the service that helps promote this passion by bringing together people and places”. He further added, “I saw great energy and passion in the Sportido founders and team and found the perfect synergy with them.”

“We are excited to receive this investment in Sportido. Our product is receiving traction and we are getting great reviews. It is a challenge for sports and fitness enthusiasts to find like-minded people and avenues to play and engage in the activities they love. With Sportido therefore, we have created an entire ecosystem where users can not only find players with similar interest and service providers, but also engage with them, book sports and fitness activities/venue/services and participate in related events. Our vision is to help everyone play any sport anywhere,” says Vishal. “Today, we are seeing a sea change in people’s mindset when it comes to physical activities and sports. Through the use of technology, introduction of innovative and inclusive formats, and unlocking access to existing ones – Sportido is looking to drive the participation numbers exponentially and be a part of India’s ‘sporting mindset’ revolution,” he added.

“We launched the Company with the belief that people are looking for new ways to engage with sports and built a team and community committed to serving them. I am so proud of the incredible work we have done so far and we are thrilled by the enthusiasm and commitment from our users and their strong support for continued growth,” said Neeraj.

As per a KPMG-CII Report, the Sports industry in India has seen rapid growth with the rising middle class’ higher disposable incomes and increase in share of spend on education and hobbies.