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. With this new capital coming to the company, the company will now spend the money on product development, and user acquisition campaigns.
Founded in August 2015 by Neeraj Aggarwala, Vishal Lunia and Akhil R, 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.
The mobile application is available on both – iOS and Android phones. Using the app, users can reserve spots at nearby sports venues, team up with like-minded players, and know about sporting activities happening in their vicinity.
Currently, the application 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.
The company is now targeting a growth of 10X in the next 12 months. Sportido is planning 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 further funding.
Speaking on his investment in Sportido, Rahul Yadav, Managing Director of 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. I saw greatenergy and passion in the Sportido founders and team and found the perfect synergy with them.
Commenting on this, Vishal Lunia, co-founder of the company, said,
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.
The company’s vision is to help everyone play any sport anywhere. Vishal believes that there is a 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, the company is looking to drive the participation numbers exponentially and be a part of India’s ‘sporting mindset’ revolution.
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. Other players in this space includes Play Your Sport, Sports365, Athletto, etc.
