I see sports as the teacher of tomorrow.
Getting more kids to play and fall in love with sports, therefore, is a problem that is worth solving. That is what has kept me & the team at Sportz Village going since 2003!
I had begun life at a BARC campus where my father was a scientist. There were mountains right behind my house, lots of playgrounds and we all enjoyed the outdoors.
I was blessed with good hand-eye coordination and enjoyed sports from childhood. By the time I got into IIT, I had been selected for the Maharashtra Badminton team.
After this, I thought I was pretty unique in straddling both academics and sports, when I got into IIT Bombay.
That notion got shot down, when I failed to qualify for the IIT Bombay badminton team! It reminded me, in a very visceral way, that balancing Sports & Education is possible!
Batch-mates at IIT or IIM would hardly have predicted that I would be an entrepreneur, let alone a sports entrepreneur.
I finished my education and got a job at Wipro.
After a few years at Wipro, I decided to give entrepreneurship a shot. “Why Not?” as a decision making philosophy definitely makes life more interesting than “Why?”.
I also had a safety net of my degrees and work experience and hence was sure that I would get a job in case things didn’t work out.
My wife and I spoke about trying it out for a year and see how it goes. That was in 1998. 24 years ago! :)
From 1999 to 2001, I had a tech startup that failed after 2 years of trying to make it work.
That was a really intense experience for me as I had never experienced “failure” so starkly till then. “The business failed but you are not a failure” takes some time to sink in!
Post this, I had gone to the US for a job as I thought I would build my own network in Tech but did not like it and was back in Bangalore again. It was 2003.
Once things cooled down in my head, I realised that I did not give the venture enough Time. I should have just stuck with it and rebuilt it.
I decided that whatever I do next, I would give it Time.
One evening, in March 2003, as I sat talking to my friend, Jayshankar, he lamented that his 6 year old, did not venture out to play in the evenings. We quickly realised, there is no decent place around to play either.
The conversation escalated pretty fast after that.
‘What if we hire a play-ground?’, I had said. ‘Parents can come and pay for their kids to play’, he had said.
That is Sportz Village for you today, 18 years later. And that 6 year old boy, Jay’s son, Siddharth, graduated from IIT Kanpur last year! :)
It was not easy.
We started out with a lot of excitement. Then reality hit me. The reality was that no one cared about my fancy background.
I was not doing the world a favour by being an entrepreneur. All the market really cared about was that my product served them what they wanted.
I luckily get my juice or positive energy from the sporting activity itself and the social contact that comes from playing with others.
Even today, after an especially hard day at work or if I am sitting on an important decision, I first head out to play. It helps me clear my head and approach things from a place of positive energy.
Many opportunities, interesting projects come our way. Not because of Strategy, but because of serendipity. It was up to us to make the most of it.
This is a good reminder that Serendipity does not get the credit it deserves.
Through the Sportz Village journey, I learnt that the universe smiles as it listens to your bold musings and every once in a while puts ideas and opportunities in front of you to make it so.
We have been very fortunate to get great support from friends, family, investors, customers and in many cases, complete strangers.
I like to think that the support came through because they saw us as genuine and also saw that we had a real chance of creating Value through the Sportz Village vision.
All I can say for myself is that I like to take on big juicy challenges and then go after them with gusto.
Our goals continue to attract the right talent in amazing ways to make it happen. We simply play out our bits, without limiting ourselves in our own heads.
I am no fan of the ‘Either - Or’.
Either you can do worthwhile things (and therefore, compromise on the financial front)
Or you can be a financial success (and not compromise on the Opportunity Cost front)
We set out to do both. We built a business that solves a problem worth solving while creating Value for all stakeholders.
Sports has sustained my professional life. It has also given wings to my spiritual side.
Twice every year, I head out to the wilderness in the mountains. It is a different recharge from social sports as it feeds the soul.
Having personally experienced so many blessings of an active physical life, it was only natural that I wanted to bring this joy and pleasure to young people.
A habit created in youth, would give a lifetime of benefits to them too.
Sportz Village is today India's largest Youth Sports Platform. We reach out with our schools, academies and consulting.
1300 of our schools have touched 6 Lakh kids already. We also have 150 academies across India and in Dubai. Our consulting touches 6000 schools, 500 colleges and 300 corporates.
We have helped nearly 4 million young people to get up and go play. Still well short of our 100 million goal for ourselves.
Because we all today live in a toxic competitive world - I want to ask you, to remind someone young - maybe not so young as well - to go out and play, starting today.
Why? because -
Play teaches us to be part of a team
Play teaches us to fail with grace, when needed
Play teaches us to enjoy our win, but enjoy the game even more
Play keeps us healthy - in body mind and spirit
A youngster’s habit can become the best investment of her life.