BENGALURU: There’s a nice little culture of five-a-side football that’s growing steadily and there’s also a rise of turfs to compliment it and it’s something that has always amazed Sunil Chhetri.
“Whenever I have time off from the season, I’m always asking my mates to set some games up and I’ve seen them frantically work their phones to get enough players given my horribly short notices,” says the Indian football team and Bengaluru FC captain.
This is when Chhetri connected with a few people, shared ideas and found guys who were on the same wavelength as him to build an app to solve this issue.
Like Tinder, Chhetris’ app fetches users around you and then notifies you about games in the area. You can accept of reject the game. Once the minimum number of players have been reached, the app offers you a “match ticket”. All there is left to do now, is show up at the venue for the game.
“Bengaluru has now been home to me for the last four years, it’s a city I love and I was only too happy to start with the GamePlan app here,” says the footballer. It took Chetri and the tech team two years to roll out the app.
Chetri’s favourite thing about the app is that it “connects you with friends or strangers around you simple because all of you want to play a game of football and need each other to make it happen”.
After connecting with the player, you will be able see venues along with its rating, location, comments and costs. The venue is booked on the app and the transaction can be made online.
The sportsman says that there is no target audience as such for the app. It is just about anyone who wants to play a game of football but struggles to make a game happen at his/her convenience, he adds. You can rate every player after a game on the app.
“We’ve recorded an excess of 100 games (with the app) in a month’s time and it’s only going to pick up once people get comfortable with it,” he says.
Around 50 venues in Bengaluru are on the app. Chhetri hopes that this project of his would generate good revenue for these venues.
The striker hopes to build a community of footballers. He hopes that strangers who meet through the app go on to form a “nice little community or stay friends”.