For most people, the fondest memories of growing up years are from the countless sporting battles they fought at the playground in the company of the closest friends. SportsWave aims to give the working professionals a chance to relive those moments again.

SportsWave, a social sports venture by IIT Alumni, aims to restore that balance and give the working professionals a chance to relive those moments again. The venture places itself as a Web 2.0 re-incarnation of the neighborhood playground. Central to their belief is their tagline, which says that “‘all you need is a pair of shoes and loads of enthusiasm”, the rest is taken care by SportsWave.

The beginning:
The idea behind starting this venture according to its co-founder Nikhil Jha, a 2007 batch IIT Bombay graduate, was to help people across ages rediscover the joy of playing sports. It also addressed the dual purpose of de-stressing from the hectic work routine and providing an enjoyable avenue to stay fit.

SportsWave is the brainchild of Jha, who is a self professed sports freak. After graduating from IIT Bombay, he changed jobs to join Ernst & Young as a consultant. The constant traveling and hectic routines gave him little time to pursue his sporting interests. He realized that there would be people like him craving to play again, and zeroed in on the two root causes that prevented this from happening. One was the lack of sporting facilities and the other was the dearth of likeminded sports enthusiasts who were so easily available during school and college. He discussed these ideas with his close friends; Nikhil Rai, a batch mate at IIT Bombay, Vivek Kumar, school mate from Jamshedpur and Tushar Kumar, school mate and IIT Madras graduate.
They were immediately drawn in by the concept, and decided to give it a shot. Rai and Vivek joined in full time, with Tushar chipping in with initial investment to start the venture in October 2010 at Gurgaon.

Game begins:
Initial brainstorming sessions led to solutions of both problems – a partnership with schools and colleges would utilize their unused capacity of sports infrastructure and a Web 2.0 site that would bring together like minded sports enthusiasts.

The early website was built with features that could make an individual feel like a sports star. The website had features that included individual profiles, videos and statistics of every game played and gets updated regularly. SportsWave tied up with Ansal Institute of Technology in Gurgaon for the sports facilities, and organized their first amateur matches in December 2010.

Initial response was heartening with just word of mouth publicity, they were able to gather 100 people on the first day, boosting their confidence that such a concept was something people were looking forward to.
They did not look back from there and since then more than 2500 individuals and 70 different corporate clients have caught on to the “Wave”.

SportsWave has successfully organized Corporate Tournaments over the past 18 months, including a 16 team Autumn Cricket League and a 16 team Corporate Champions League.
The pricing was kept affordable to encourage participation. They wanted to place this as an alternative weekend option to usual movie going or pub hopping that people end up doing on a weekend. Playing a cricket match costs Rs. 300 while a session of football costs Rs. 150. The monthly membership rates are even lower.
They also want people to explore sports as an alternate option to stay fit, as most people are bored by working out alone in gym and need a much more exciting alternative.

Key highlights:
The positive feedback spurred the team to further build on the user experience. They introduced the video highlights feature in the cricket tournament, setting up their Youtube channel. Highlights of every match are put on Youtube, and the players can see their hits and misses during the game. The response to the video highlights feature was amazing. They received requests from players to give them all the clips where they featured. They also started writing match reports, and had live text commentary of important matches. The idea was to make the user experience as similar to an international game as possible. On the revenue front they had already made their first million within first 6 months. As a measure to utilize the facilities on weekdays, they hired coaches to provide coaching to children. The team wanted to scale up and get more centers to meet demand. Tushar pitched the idea to one of his friends Om Gupta, an established industrialist and owner of Raja Group, who was keen on the concept. Gupta agreed to provide angel funding for the growth of the venture and has joined the company’s board as a director.

Very soon, SportsWave added a new center in Sector 4 Gurgaon, in partnership with MM Public School. The new ground enabled them to meet demands and leveraged on the user base they had built during the past year. To meet the growing demand, they are now looking for new centers in the NCR region and also plan to replicate the concept in other metro cities. The venture got an international endorsement as Tushar, an active member of the entrepreneurship club at MIT Sloan School of Management. bagged the Leagtum Fellowship for the concept.

Future advancements:
SportsWave is working on a new and advanced version of their website, which will have stat tracking of all players and they can unlock ‘badges’ based on their on-field performances. These badges will be linked to rewards and gifts to encourage good performers. It considers every player as a sports star, and they promise to take all measures possible to give him or her that sports star treatment. These new features are a step towards doing that. “Our ultimate vision is to re-kindle the passion for playing sports which will help everyone adopt a fitter, healthier and most importantly happier lifestyle.” says Jha.