A sports enthusiast, Nakul Kapur found it hard to play his favourite games after entering corporate life and found it even more cumbersome to garner information on the go-to venues for sports in Delhi NCR where he worked. Equipped with an MBA degree from International Management Institute (IMI, Delhi), Nakul, 25, who has two years of product management experience in dotcom companies like Paytm and Oxigen Services, says, “I was a regular at sporting events in school and college. Dearth of information about places to play sports in Delhi NCR is what prompted me to start Playnlive.com.” Started in September 2013 along with Rahul Wadhwa as co-founder, Nakul quit his job in March this year to plunge himself into Playnlive full time and has a team of five now.
Rahul gives us a little nugget on naming the company thus: “Playnlive means play your favourite sport, get involved in your choice of activity and live a healthy and balanced lifestyle.” Playnlive provides information related to more than 30 sports across 17 cities in India. It provides an array of information on sports clubs, complexes, coaching academies and sporting events. A visitor is furnished with information such as photos, facilities available, timings, reviews, maps and contact details. Their blog, The Official Playnlive Blog, also provides information on sports, health and fitness.
About their future plans, Nakul adds, “We are planning to launch a social-networking platform for sports enthusiasts in about six months. As we already have a sports discovery platform, it would encourage people to discover like-minded enthusiasts and book a space to play together in their respective cities.” The founders claim that they have three times the web traffic than its biggest competitor (Playerify.com from Bangalore and Fitternity.com from Mumbai).
In what might be a great tip to people teeming with ideas but lack the chutzpah to set up shop, Nakul adds, “It’s always about the execution; ideas have the shelf life of a banana”.
A bootstrapped company, Playnlive is in advanced talks with a few investors. The founders say that collecting and verifying data with limited manpower and capital was the most taxing work during the initial days. Now they are dealing with the verification of data available on Playnlive. With hardly a rupee spent on the marketing front, they are gaining traction through organic search results from Google.
Expecting to break even by the end of the fiscal 2014, Playnlive earns its revenue through online ticketing, cash management and advertisements by sports equipment sellers. They also plan to organise sporting events. The founders dream of a day when they would be referred to as ‘The World’s Largest Platform for Sports and Fitness Enthusiasts’.
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