Pune: While sports play a vital role in the development of a child; it helps physical, emotional and mental well-being, it is unfortunately often neglected and dispensed with a rudimentary physical training class or a basic “games/sports” coach. And perhaps this callous disregard over generations had until a few years back have restricted our country’s potential performance in international sporting events.
It is only after a few initiatives such as Olympic Gold Quest, Fit India and the like that we awoke to the importance of sports and fitness in our lives.
But for Abhinav Sinha, who had trained to be a lawyer, sports had a special calling. “I had worked with a hedge fund for a year, but since I was a passionate squash player I felt more inclined towards the sport,” he said.
Passionate enough to give up his job, and start his own squash training academy, the Rolling Nicks in Pune in 2011.
At the academy, Abhinav noticed that not enough information was available to students and parents alike regarding their progress in the game.
“I had worked abroad and whilst there I noticed that sport coaches would generally make a record of their students’ progress on Excel sheets. But back in India schools had nothing to give to parents and their own students by way of a report card.
“All students get report cards on their students. How well, badly they are faring in all their subjects. But does any school give a report card on how the student is doing in his or her chosen sport? Do parents, teachers even students know if say their swing, backhand, footwork in say a game like tennis improving from the last quarter? Is there any record? Unfortunately, no,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}“All students get report cards on their students. How well, badly they are faring in all their subjects. But does any school give a report card on how the student is doing in his or her chosen sport? Do parents, teachers even students know if say their swing, backhand, footwork in say a game like tennis improving from the last quarter? Is there any record? Unfortunately, no,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}And, according to the co-founders — Abhinav and Chetan Desai — of sportstech startup SportsSkill, this data is vital for any sportsperson. While Abhinav, a squash player himself having played for India as well, was mulling over this lack of data for sportspersons; Chetan, who had behind him a multifaceted career with advertising, exports and marketing with a sports company besides being a pro tennis player himself, met the former coincidentally in Mumbai. They got talking about sports as most sportspeople do and got charged about this aspect of the missing data for people dedicated to sports.
Abhinav said, “I remembered the Excel sheets that coaches kept, or details in their notebook about some of their professional players. But is it possible for a trainer to keep detailed record of every single student over a long period? At least not mentally. Let’s say a child is weak in maths and his parents send him for tuitions. His tests will reflect whether his tutor’s and his own hard work is helping. The marks will speak for itself.
“But what if a student is learning to play say tennis and needs to improve his swing. The coach may notice it and even tell the student. May even keep a record. But can he remember the minute details of say 40 students of an academy? Not possible. So, we thought why not have a way to capture this data that would act as a very useful tool for any sportsperson?”
And, in 2022, the idea of a tool to help sportspersons was worked upon to create SportsSkill.
Making of the app
Since both Abhinav and Chetan are not tech people, they needed to hire people who could help them build the tool. But to do so, they first did their own research. Chetan said, “We met coaches from different fields, visited schools, academies and got their opinion on what they thought would be useful to them.”
The result was unanimous. Everyone felt the need for proper data to help their students. Abhinav said, “It’s impossible in today’s world for a sportsperson to work without this vital data. Every time a student practices, she must know how she is faring. Has there been an improvement or not? Are there areas she needs to work on? In fact, you need to know even when you are doing fitness training.
“Let’s say a boy practices with his coach four times a week. On the weekend he goes for a run and trains extensively. If this is not noted, then chances are his overtraining could result in injury. Or that he did some action that was incorrect, something that his coach needs to see and know so that he can be corrected. Record keeping is a very vital art of sports training.”
No doubt about that. And while the duo did their research and got the inputs for what their tool should be able to provide, they also found a person who was equally passionate about the business of sports and had the tech skills to develop it.
Chetan said, “Initially we built one app that kept plain text data. But then we realised that it was not enough. Besides data, a sportsperson needed to know technique that could be possible with a video. We needed to have videos included too so that a coach sitting anywhere in the world could see what his or her student was doing during practice and provide guidance.”
And so, in 2023, they added video to the data collection. This they tested with the sports academies they knew in and around Pune and Mumbai.
Funding
Initially, around ₹1.5 crore has been invested by founders and angel investors to build the app, hire people, research and development (R&D) and marketing. But now it have piqued the interest of KP Balaraj, an investor and avid sportsperson himself. “We are excited to partner with SportsSkill to promote the sports ecosystem in India. It’s great to see the massive growth happening in sports leagues as well as the growing use of tech in sports coaching and development. Both the founders of SportsSkill are accomplished world class athletes and bring that experience to their clients and partners,” Balaraj said.
To market, to market
When they launched SportsSkill, the duo decided that it would be a business-to-business (B2B) format.
“To that end, we went to few schools and academies all over the country,” Chetan said.
They managed to get a tennis academy in Indore interested in their app. Abhinav said, “They had about 25 students and are using our app to keep records of the students so as to be able to coach them better. They now have increased that number and have enrolled 100 students on our app.”
With more and more coaches and parents finding the usefulness of SportsSkill, the usage is set to increase from this tennis academy “to about 200”.
The company is meeting schools in Pune with large sports infrastructure and are in the process of signing up one with 300 kids soon. “So far, we have had 1,000 downloads and are very optimistic about getting more customers,” Chetan said. The duo has realised that the need for an app such as theirs is more acutely felt in smaller towns, “as the students in small towns do not have easy access to coaches or academies. Our app can fill that gap to a great extent. In fact, it can help coaches discover talent too!”
They have a subscription-based fee charging ₹250 per month per student.
“While we have only just started posting some revenues, we have our sights set on the US market,” Abhinav said.
With sports and fitness gaining ground in our country as well as the world, looks like this app will find the space for success.