“All work and no play makes jack a dull boy”
Probably Jack wouldn’t be all that dull if work was all about play! That was exactly what we witnessed on the14th of December at the last Startup Saturday edition of 2013. A number of ‘Jack’s and ‘Jill’s who wanted to work in the play arena had lined up for the event, the theme of the day being ‘Sports’. The cold winter morning in Bangalore could do little to hamper the spirit of these sports+startup enthusiasts.
The session started off with the usual ice breaking intro session. That the audience comprised of a number of aspiring entrepreneurs was no surprise, knowing the concept of SSBLR and the typical statistics of its audience pattern. As one among the audience rightly put, people were at SS for ‘Information and Inspiration’.
What’s a sports edition without some fun? The best question for each session was selected by the speaker and the winners were given copies of ‘Because Shit happened – What not to do in a start up’ by Harsh Snehanshu. The speakers’ gifts were sponsored by MySaugat.com, thanks to their collaboration with Startup Saturday.
Here is a quick round up of the sessions:
- SPEAKER #1 – Mr. Parminder Gill, Founder of EduSports
We love listening to stories, don’t we? Mr. Gill started his speech with a story of Mullah Nazruddin! This was followed by an inspirational video of EduSports’ rise to success. Mr. Gill explained how they took the ‘grassroots level’ route to encouraging Sports than the sponsorship route. He emphasised the importance of creating consumption of sports first so that businesses can be built on that.
Here are a few highlights from the talk:
* Focus on ‘Sports Education’, made mistakes and learnt fast; ended up building a profitable, sustainable business.
* “Had to sometimes do management by hunch. It was like being dropped midway in dense forest and asked to find our own way out.”
* “From IT to dealing with the local education and sports sector – It was a difficult transition from the digital level to a broken administration level”.
When asked how they managed to crack the first deal, Mr. Gill explained what worked for them – Presentation+’Hard to miss’ team + Forward thinking, west educated prospective clients who realized the importance of sports education.
Overall, it was a fitting start to the day.
- DEMO # 1 – BigToss mobile app by Mr. Dev Pathi, CTO, Coolio Online ( Big Toss )
The demo started off on an interesting note- a rapid fire Q & A and gifts for the audience! He briefed the audience about the cool mobile app that Coolio has launched – The BigToss, which is a sports app created to deliver a live sporting experience, helping the audience to connect with the game, make predictions and in the process, bring together a likeminded community of sports enthusiasts. BigToss also facilitates discussions and provides curated content from news providers to engage the users of the app. The app is currently available on app store and android.
You can reach out to BigToss at contactus@thebigtoss.com
- SPEAKER #2 – Mr. Chandra Sekhar of Sports365
Sports365 is a 2-year-old, Bangalore based online+ offline (institutional) business. Mr. Shekhar traced the journey of Sports365 from its inception till present. From spending months talking to suppliers, investors etc., to analysing the scattered market and broken supply chain, the team did it all to break into the market. With a clear focus to build a credible brand, Sports365 set out to make partnerships with iconic sports persons and ended up growing the business from 0 to 10 crores in year 1. He also listed the difficulties that they faced, including investors’ hesitation to invest in the sector, the consumer not necessarily being the customer and a few more. Here are some quotes from his speech:
“Risk of obsolescence is low in this business”
“Love for sport and business for sport – they have very little in common.”
“I love sports. So much that, on my honeymoon, I went to watch Aus. vs NZ cricket match!”
“Followers of sport and practitioners of sport – they are two very different groups”
The crystal clear speech left the audience amazed.
- SPEAKER #3 – Mr. Porush Jain of SportsKeeda
During his college days, Porush realized that there were many cricket websites, but there was not even a single website dedicated to sports. He started Sportskeeda in 2009 while he was still at college and was about to write his final year MBA exam.
The idea was to create the biggest sports website of India. He approached best sports writers apart from cricket. Within a short span of time he had top football writers , golf writers and even one kabbaddi writer. Not just this, there were 10000 hits too! Today there are 2,800 sports writers on sportskeeda and 100-200 articles a day are posted.
Mr. Porush also briefed the audience about Sports Keeda’s future plans, some of which include an events solution, focus on Indian Sports etc.
Here are a few key pointers from his speech:
“Sportskeeda wants to be India focused and align with the rate of the growth of Indian Sports.”
“Sportskeeda’s philosophy is to crowdsource every kind of content , not only write-ups , but also the videos and other kinds of content.”
“The team came to me.They were passionate about Sports and we were providing them a platform.”
- DEMO #2 – Playerify by Mr. Prashant Pansare
Playerify hinges on the fact that every sport is social in nature. It is a platform for discovering sports players, the venue to play and more info in the domain one is interested in. Every player has his/her own sports profile on Playerify in their interested domain of sports. Playerify is planning to make money by hosting tournaments/events via Playerify platform. Mr. Prashant also mentioned their plan to expand to include a variety of sports. Mr. Prashant can be contacted at Prashant@playerify.com.
That was followed by a lightning pitch by KunalKant Sen of MySaugat.com. MySaugat’s vision is to make unique, meaningful, memorable and usable gifts that the receiver would value & appreciate for a long time. Good luck Kunal!
The networking session that ensued was a brilliant one, with the 70 + audience getting to know each other and making the professional connections. Here are some testimonials:
“Perfect startup place!”
“ Great work Headstart!”
“Silicon Valley has finally arrived! Thank you for bringing it together.”
“ Too much to gain and learn.”
“Interactive and enjoyed being a first timer here.”
Thus ended another amazing version of SS Bangalore. You can check out the photos on our Facebook page.
Here’s the Headstart team wishing you a very happy year-end and New Year. Hope to see you all in 2014 with more dreams and more stories!
-Malini Gowrishankar