Several parallel phenomena including rising disposable incomes, greater awareness, and the increasing popularity of sports outside cricket (particularly soccer and basketball) have gained substantial momentum. The result is that today sports/fitness activities are increasingly central to the lives of India’s urban youth.

The market is still, however, in the early stages of development. Domestic and global players have been making substantial investments in all segments of the industry including gyms and fitness centers, pay-and-play sports venues and sports and fitness apparel/equipment. The latest estimates for the size of the overall market range from ₹120-175 billion in sales. We believe that this market represents a unique set of characteristics and opportunities.

Arenamo is our solution for this space. We aim to create a platform that provides users (i.e. consumers) a forum to discover local venues/facilities/coaches ranked by relevance and user reviews as well as find/interact with other local users with similar interests.

Several individuals who we canvassed during our research expressed – and this is consistent with our own experience in organizing pick-up games – that finding people to play with can be a challenge. We believe that the process is difficult not for a dearth of available players, but because they often lie outside the users’ sphere of connections. By providing a sports-specific platform, we believe that this problem can be addressed. The social aspect of the experience that we have envisioned extends to the creation of teams, the ability to upload and maintain score-lines, as well as create and update tournaments online. Stickiness is critical to any platform, and we feel that sport is a uniquely social phenomena, and the ability to earn ‘bragging rights’ and share achievements within your circle is something that will drive multiple returns.

In essence, what we have to companies in the sports industry can be summed up in one word, targeting. Sports, fitness etc. are relatively general terms and can often produce unrelated results, unless users are searching for something using a highly specific string. For example, on Facebook, there is no guarantee that a user who likes soccer or Manchester United Football Club actually plays soccer.

However, an Arenamo user who is interested in soccer is one who either plays regularly or wants to learn how to play, and is therefore much more likely to purchase equipment, book a venue or scout for services. We feel that by creating a community of people who actually participate or are interested in participating in sports/fitness activities, we are essentially moving ‘down the funnel’ and closer to the purchase decision for these consumers, whatever particular channel they may be interested in.