MUMBAI: Online sports platform, BookMySports announced the launch of its website and conducted a product demonstration with popular Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh at The Taj Mahal Hotel. Users and corporate firms can now book sports facilities or create their own sports tournaments online within a matter of minutes.
Present at the launch, BMS CEO & co- founder Akanksha Saxena said, “We are aiming at increasing the capacity utilization of sports facilities across cities by connecting the sports lovers to them through our online platform. The idea came up through my personal experience and was created as a solution to our own problems with finding spaces to play”. She further added that BookMySports has products tapping the entire value chain spanning across the sports ecosystem. According to an independent report, the size of global sports industry is estimated between USD 480bn to USD620bn, growing at a CAGR of 3.5%.
Co-founder & CEO Sameer Thapa highlighted an opportunity in BookMySports to perfectly synchronise a financially viable enterprise with a socially relevant need to pursue sports and fitness across demographics. He stresses the online platform that engages with all the stakeholders of sports ecosystem through its comprehensive product interventions, thereby, enhancing commercial scope and viability of the business in addition to improving their good will.
BookMySports will enable the industry to derive benefits from better management of demand and supply, introducing operational efficiencies and benchmarking transparency in the pricing and service delivery for users. The growing interest in sports combined with a technology enabled platform and ease of access will further enhance the market size.
The platform covers major sports such as football, aerobics, swimming, volleyball, cricket, tennis, basketball, rifle shooting and many more. It provides relevant information on the sports infrastructure to benchmark the expectations that users must have and help in price discovery. In the process, users do not have to depend on hearsay when looking to book facilities to play sports. Parents too need not physically scout for sports academies to enrol their children. The map view on the website further enables in discovering facilities and academies in nearby locations.
Harbhajan Singh who inaugurated the product was quite excited to be associated with a sports dedicated start-up, focused at promoting a culture of sports and fitness. “While I was growing up I had immense love just not for cricket but every kind of sport, however, we have persistently witnessed a lack of access to sports ground and other facilities. An online solution to this problem was unimaginable till now.” commented Harbhajan.
He also spoke about the relevance of the product in metro cities where people especially the youth do not seem to find the time, space or like-minded communities to actively pursue sports and fitness activities. The start-up has associated with multiple sports academies in Delhi-NCR and just started operations in Bangalore. As per our internal sources, they have plans to expand operations across 6 cities in India and globally by March 2016.
