India based golf performance and practice app UpGame has raised an undisclosed amount from Premier League stars James Milner and Adam Lallana through their firm White Rose Sports Management.
This comes on the heels of a 30X growth in monthly revenues for UpGame since the start of the year.
UpGame is a sports performance app dedicated towards the art of golf, a game that has usually evaded the masses in India but it slowly making its way to the mainstream. It allows users to analyze their game and become a better player through a wide slew of features. This includes a map-based interface and unique metrics, that are shareable between player and coach via the app itself, have led to a 790% increase in data collection from users.
While the app started with golf in mind (or as the first game), it is now being used by top professional and amateur players, federations and NCAA college teams. Thus, in essence, UpGame seeks to become more than a golf dedicated platform and hopes to market itself as the platform for getting better at sports.
Thanks to this offering, the startup has been able to grow at a rapid pace, having logged 2 million games over the past couple of years on its platform, retaining over 85% of its users as it expands across geographies.. It has already managed to onboard prestigious National Federations like Golf Australia, Norwegian Golf Federation, Singapore Golf Association, Hong Kong Golf Association, Sports Authority of Thailand and Finnish Golf Union. Various PGA, LPGA, European Tour, as well as major champions and leading NCAA US college teams are also key users of UpGame.
Speaking about the funding, Sameer Sawhney Founder & CEO, Upgame said: “Both James and Adam are legends of the game who have great understanding of what it takes to perform at the highest level and the important role stats play in any sport. We’re thrilled to have two of the world’s most famous athletes join us on our journey. The travel restrictions posed due to the pandemic meant that our entire team was able to double down on the product to become the preferred data intelligence and practice tracking platform for golfers in every market we have entered so far.
The funding will now be used to increase the number of sports on UpGame and provide more metrics to users.
“We are looking forward to applying our learnings from golf to other sports and be at the forefront of knowledge and performance enhancement in the burgeoning sports technology industry,” said Sawhney.
James Milner, Liverpool midfielder and founder of White Rose Sports Management, said: “From the moment we discussed the ethos of White Rose Sports Management, we wanted performance to be at the heart of everything we did, and this aspect was very apparent in the Upgame team in our initial interactions.
We love their vision of bringing performance improvement to athletes around the world, the team’s intense focus, quick execution and deep insights on their users. We are delighted to be a part of their journey.”
