They’re out to prove that sports aren’t just kids’ games – and they just raised funding

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Around the time I entered my teenage years, a weird social phenomenon was occurring to me and my friends – it was suddenly uncool to like anything. The zinger to top all zingers at the time was “If you love it so much, why don’t you marry it?” Marriage was also a Very Uncool Thing. We were 12 years young, and anything having to do with adulthood was icky. Ultimate burn.

Fast forward a decade and into the startup world, where loving something so much you build a company around it is a Very Cool Thing. Ujwal Sutaria, Praveen Gadpayle, and Narayana Vyas have loved sports since they were kids. Moreover, they were good at sports – IIM-Ahmedabad alumni Ujwal and Narayana in particular ended up playing tennis at the national level.

It was just a hop, skip, and a jump to turning it into their mission, which became clear when they left university and found that their love of sports hadn’t waned. It was just hard to find when, where, and with whom to play.

“We wanted to try to digitize sports infrastructure,” explains Ujwal. “[For sports venues], everything is done on pen and paper. There is no proper info given – even on the website.”

Inspired by the smartphones popping up around them, they founded Athletto last year in April with the goal of helping people find places to play the sports of their choice. The startup has just raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from industrialist and sports lover Atul Ingle.

The startup plans to use the investment to expand more into Bangalore – and to add two other cities to its list. At the moment, they can help you find recreational centers in New Delhi, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Ahmedabad, and Mumbai. Available on the web, Google Play, and the Apple Store, Athletto has you pick your city and the sport of your choice – for example, inputting Bangalore gives you options for badminton, cricket, football, golf, and tennis. Then, it gives you a list of nearby venues. If you’re in Bangalore, you and your friends can also book the venue of your choice for an available time slot. It also offers access to coaches.

Full swing

(From left) Athletto’s co-founders: Ujwal Sutaria, Praveen Gadpayle, and Narayana Vyas.

Sports venues can sign up to be part of the cloud-based portal and pay for Athletto’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) that allows them to do so. The subscription fee depends on multiple factors, including the number of facilities. If the venue makes a sale through the app, Athletto gets a commission, usually around 10 to 20 percent. Payments are processed online.

Athletto’s model is similar to that of Bangalore-based Playo, which connects amateur sports players with venues, potential teammates (it’s hard to play tennis by yourself, or doubles with three people), sporting events, and coaches.

Meanwhile, Play Your Sport, present in Delhi and Mumbai, can hook users up with venues, potential teammates, and sport events that can be created by users. It raised pre-series A funding just last month. People can also use Play Your Sport to follow their favorite sports teams.

GoSporto, BookMySports, and OyePlay also have similar ideas.

So what’s helping Athletto make the cut? It won India Sports Award special recognition in the sports startup category and was shortlisted for Y Combinator’s S16 batch. It was also incubated at IIM-Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) and CIIE’s Mavericks fellowship. Ujwal claims it has over 10,000 active users.

Team players