IndiaKhelo.com: Lets get more medals in the next Olympics
For every 1,000 people on this planet, 175 are Indians. But, out of the 1,000 medals given out in the last “2008 Beijing Olympic Games”, only 3 were grabbed by Indians.
Does the above fact translate to the lack of talented sports persons in India ?
It’s not that Indians lack talent, but lack of a system in India to identify them from this vast country and give them a push, has been slinging enough dirty mud on the face of India with her sports fraternity garnering only a feeble number of medals in the successive Olympic games.
Though it’s not unusual that graduates from IITs fly off to developed countries chasing huge pay packets, these IIT grads in their mid twenties have turned up with a dream to improve sports in India and envisage for more number of Indians to garner those coveted medals in the next Olympics.
IndiaKhelo.com is set in to improve sports culture in India at the grassroots level. Each school, college or sports club affiliated to IndiaKhelo.com Sideways trailer has its own profile page, where they would record the results of all inter class / inter school matches. A report card facility measures their performance and gives them institutional / national level rankings. The pyramidal structure with various levels motivates the player to move up to the next level. This innovative system makes the transition of a grass-root player to a professional national level player with talent being the only criterion. This way the players know where they stand, get enough motivation to work harder and climb up the ladder. The system ensures that those at the top are the very best in their field of sports.
An IIT-Madras product of 2005 batch, Prashant was watching cricket in which India lost to Bangaladesh in 2007. Very much frustrated that he skipped his office for a couple of days. The itch in his mind, made himself to ask “WHY?” on the dismal performance of Indians in the overall sports scenario. His thirst to improve the Indian sports fraternity saw him turning down his US$ 90,000/Year job at HSBC in Chicago. His love over his country made him take the flight back to India in 2008. After a tiring search, he teamed up with the right set of people to sow the seeds of IndiaKhelo to develop the culture of sports in India.
Varun Gupta a national medalist in swimming, had dreamt of representing India. But lack of prospects hindered him to do the somersault. Instead, he switched to studies and now pursuing at IIT-Madras. An ex Sports Secretary at IIT-M, his urge to visualize a system that would help Indian sports persons in enhancing their sports career saw him joining hands with Prashant.
Vaibhav Tandon an IIT-Roorkee (2007) passed out, a national level table tennis player, was once the flag-holder in Inter IIT competitions. He was working as a Project Manager at Kotak Mahindra. His love over sports and a chance to take part in improving the Indian sports scenario seduced his entrepreneurial urge to jump into IndiaKhelo.com.
IndiaKhelo.com, a 25 people strong self funded company is based out of Bangalore and operates from Chennai, Delhi, Dehradun and soon to be at Mumbai. Being a first of its kind dedicated sports portal, identifying right people for building the team has been a real challenge.
With 2,500 users and most of them being regular in recording and accessing the statistics, people are still bound to understand the power of this simple and new kinda service in the long run. Since most of their target people live in rural area; working from just 4 metropolitan cities does not actually feed enough fodder for this company to realize its vision. To penetrate into rural India, the company is being incubated at Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) The Signal dvd in IIT-Madras campus under the mentorship of Padamshri Awardee Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala.
Being a first of its kind sports portal, it’s a mammoth task to develop a huge credibility around their product in order to get appreciated and spread across the country. Marketing is through Word of Mouth, which is happening mostly through coaches and school management whom they get to network at the educational expos and sports events. Mahesh Bhupati Tennis Academy was their first client followed by several sports academies.
In the next couple of years, they plan to reach at least 300 schools and identify good talents to be trained for International level. “Our long term vision is that everyone is playing for IndiaKhelo and we are serving every Indian athlete a full fledged performance tracking system” tells Varun.
Their model is 25% online and 75% offline and as of now internet plays that of a media. They are affiliating with Government and Corporate bodies to make the push into rural India. Revenue generation is through nominal charges collected from schools, associations and sports academies.
“Let we Indians get more medals in 2016 Olympics” Varun quips to Startupstory.in
IndiaKhelo.com Rural Technology and Business Incubator IIT-Madras Campus Chennai, 600036.
Prashant Pitti, Co-founder, E: prashant@indiakhelo.com, On FaceBook & Linkedin
Varun Gupta, Co-founder and Business Head, E: varun@IndiaKhelo.com, M: +91-9884577934, On Orkut, FaceBook & Linkedin
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I wish all the luck to these guys. I really wish they succeed in what they are upto.. India seriously need more entrepreneurs taking up tasks like this in other fields too..