CHENNAI: Whether you are a parent keen on finding your child a good coach, an athlete trying to get funding, a school willing to provide your premises for sports, a corporate looking for places to park your money as part of Corporate Social Responsibility, or even a sports enthusiast looking for the best sporting events in town, the Run Adam app has something to offer everyone.
Yeraga Selvan came up with the idea after the failure of his first venture. “The failure propelled me to try my hand at different things which included a stint in the movie business after which I even got involved in the Caribbean Premier League where I had the chance to interact with cricket legends and there began my love affair with managing sports,” said Selvan, MD and CEO of Run Adam.
“During the course of this work, I realised that there were many international cricketing greats who were looking for post-retirement opportunities and there were so many children in India whose parents were willing to pay a substantial amount just to see their children trained by such legends. In the end, everyone was happy — the legends, the children and the parents.”
“When India won only two medals at the 2016 Olympics, I felt very strongly about it and wanted to do something. So, I decided to look at the factors at the lowest and most important level — schools. Most of them had just one PT master who trained children in all the sports, many did not have a playground and others did not have support staff. Further, proper records weren’t maintained which is later problematic for athletes.”
When schools in the city began warming up to the idea of having a specialist to train their students, Selvan dreamed bigger. He dreamed of a platform that could connect the different stakeholders and provide solutions for the issues plaguing the sports ecosystem in India.
“I approached MS Dhoni with my idea and he was very encouraging, but told me to work on certain aspects. We worked on it for a few months and he launched the app in August 2018 while also buying a 25% stake in a personal capacity. Run Adam has the potential to connect athletes with people who either might be willing to sponsor them or even could provide them with access to training and mentorship through more senior experienced players and athletes.”
“Currently, we have 14,000 users with 1,400 national and international athletes across five sports. We have 600 schools on-board with 1,500+ registered coaches. Since many of these athletes don’t know English, our next step is to make the app available in multiple languages to enhance the user experience,” he said.
Shedding light on the struggle that countless athletes face, he said this app could help them get sponsorship for their nutrition, equipment, support staff and so on.
“I find that a lot of corporates too are open to sponsoring an athlete now than ever before,” he said.
“And it need not even be corporates, anyone who feels like donating towards any of the causes, can go ahead and do it through the app. We hope to make life easier for our athletes and as a constantly evolving platform, we hope to address more issues as time goes by to make the sports ecosystem a far more conducive one for athletes.”