CHENNAI: When Deepak Gullapalli, CEO, Head Digital Works (HDW), came across the opportunity of acquiring the domain of cricket.com, he was left in a pool of thoughts with respect to creating a platform solely dedicated to cricket enthusiasts. He told CE, “We started doing our research on people using hand-held devices to go through cricket content. What we found was a huge gap between what the consumers wanted and what they got in return. From the survey results, the biggest demand was for live updates and the second on the list was data and statistics.”
With HDW having over a decade worth of experience in data science and analytics, Gullapalli established ‘criclytics’, a tool solely dedicated to providing live cricket analysis to cricket fans and enthusiasts as a part of cricket.com. Launched in April 2019 and based in Hyderabad, the platform analyses the data sourced from vendors and uses predictive modelling to anticipate the way a game may turn out.
This not only helps cricket teams analyse their games but is also changing the consumption pattern of viewers. “We also have a death-over simulator which predicts what might happen during the final overs of a match and we deliver it with gamification so the consumer can understand how the data is being used while watching the match, which is an innovation in itself,” said Gullapalli.
Viewers are now interested to know the stats and understand subtle nuances the game will generate, beforehand. Fans now want real-time updates, and now with the existence of sites like cricket.com, they can watch cricket and have access to the scoreboard and statistics sitting anywhere with an internet connection, along with real-time updates and analysis.
When asked about the funding raised and investors involved, the company stated that they have had a few private investors. Soon, they plan to bring in a more advanced version of the platform that has already crossed over one million downloads on app platforms. “We have live scores and real-time predictions for all the international matches. We are looking forward to moving into domestic matches. Gamification within the app is also something we want to focus on,” he shared.
In a nutshell
n Founded in April 2019
n Based in Hyderabad
n Cricket.com analyses data to predict insights about micro-segments of the game for a better informed viewer
n Provides real-time updates on player performance based on AI-driven predictions