Kabaddi Adda - Home for Bangladesh's national sport

Kabaddi is a zero-cost fast paced sport with the second most viewed sports league on Indian television.  Bangladesh's national sport is Kabaddi. Performance in Consistent in Asian Games (Silver – 1990, 1994, 2002 and Bronze – 1998, 2006, 2010, 2014). Since 1995 though, not a single player in the Bangladesh National Kabaddi team has been outside Services or Defence teams.

PROBLEM 

• Coverage of Kabaddi content is limited - almost none in Bangla 
• No systematic online resource to learn Kabaddi
• Offering is inconsistent - Repetitive content, lack of data and information sources.

SOLUTION

We partner with Kabaddi tournaments in a franchise model. The tournaments follow a set of standard practices to access our wide distribution networks and rich data collection. Thus tournaments get greater reach and relevance while fans get an enriching experience. 

We are trying to rejuvenate the sport and change the way communities perceive Kabaddi.

Every community needs entertainment; and none better than sport! Kabaddi with its action packed 40 minute format provides the stickiness. The dominance of Kabaddi also co-relates with its reach. 

An estimated average 400 million watch cricket in India, and about 316 Million watched ProKabaddi League 2017 finals. This league uncovered something organic about the sport of Kabaddi in the last 5 years. Based on data from TV viewership for the sport in India, our market potential 50+ Million in Bangladesh.

Surprisingly, there is barely any news or media coverage for Kabaddi in Bangladesh. Almost nothing in Bangla, the national language. There are no systematic online resources to learn and grow the sport of Kabaddi. There is no data collected in tournaments with the exception of the final score, leaving content writers with nothing much to say. 

We are looking to replicate our model (running in India for the past 18 months) in Bangladesh. 

The sport of Kabaddi is making a tremendous revival in India. In the past 5 years, Kabaddi is only second to cricket in India in terms of viewership. The ProKabaddi league in India is designed and distributed along the lines of the NBA. Our tournaments in Bangladesh are likely to be a change agent for rural communities. 

• Connect academies and schools for Kabaddi. An estimated 100+ academies present across the 8 districts across Bangladesh, with anywhere between 50-100 players.  Players who take up Kabaddi career, especially in States of Haryana and Punjab, find a way to get out of social traps such as unemployment and drug abuse. 
• Kabaddi Fans : Based of data from TV viewership for the sport to India, our market potential 50+ Million in Bangladesh

Players/Coaches Impacted ~ 7500

Fans Impacted ~ 50+ Million

Rindhana, a village in Haryana (India) with a population of 6000+ which boasts of sending 27 players to the Indian Prokabaddi league. Each year an estimated 1-2 Million $ is the earnings of the town; basically the town is financed by Kabaddi players. 

We are currently connected to the Bangladesh Kabaddi ecosystem 

• Through players who have played in India
• Academies on our platform

We want to bridge this gap by connecting the ecosystem

• Partner with kabaddi clubs and federations in covering more tournaments  using our Live Streaming and Live scoring tools.
• Create a structured platform and process to support new players to be discovered and upskilled by coaching and conditioning partners - not just in Bangladesh but also in the Prokabaddi league. 
• Use all the information thus aggregated to deliver engaging news capsules for fans through all our distribution channels

There are hundreds of Kabaddi tournaments across 8 districts in Bangladesh. None of them have relevance to the audience outside their local area. We partner with existing tournaments and create a world-wide relevance to them. Our strengths include

1. Distribution : We have a 180k+ Youtube subscribers, 10000+ strong Whatsapp Channel, 40k+ Instagram followers and 3000+ website visitors daily. 

2. Data scoring tool : Mobile friendly tool to collect, display and stream data online seamlessly through KabaddiAdda.com

We have a strong video content team with a proprietary tool to generate Highlights and other content in a matter of minutes. 

We connect with local tournament organisers to give relevance to their tournaments. Outputs include every match associated with a scorecard and video stream.

As a result, 

• Children in local communities have a concrete goal of playing well in the tournament
• The quality of Kabaddi improves, results in the making of local stars (who will be agents of change)
• Fans will have a sport they can easily relate to - a sport you can often play inside your home! 

The current growth we are seeing in subscribers to our distribution channels, the nature of queries and engagement we receive daily is a good indicator that our limited solution delivery is already being valued across the ecosystem.

Anecdotes:

• 50+ Academies have reached out to us and requested us to feature them (Validation for KA certification, new student sourcing and delivering more value to current students)
• 1500+ New / potential players and juniors have reached out to us for skills content, academy locations, and path to PKL selection
• 7 franchisee owners / CEOs are on our platform out of their own will. All 12 teams are well aware of Kabaddi Adda and two have even tried to replicate our Whatsapp Channel
• 10+ Brands have reached out to us to feature their content or their Kabaddi tournament

Currently : ~200,000+ users across our website, Youtube, Whatsapp and Instagram channel. 

400 Million+ users watch the kabaddi league, largely from India broadcast online and on television. Another ecosystem occurred with the Reliance Jio revolution which gave internet access to millions at a very low cost. 

In the next one year, we want to target ~15 Mil of these users constituting the online audience. In 5 years, our target is ~150 Mil users including 50 Mil in Bangladesh alone. 

October 2019:

1. Increase our distribution from 0.5+ Million to 15 Million; one contributing factor being expansion into Bangladesh
2. 100 videos skills series listed on online learning platforms (currently 57)
3. Have a comprehensive website in Bangla (currently in Hindi and English)
4. Tie up with 30 academies in Bangladesh and help them recruit upto 3000 players

Dec 2023:

1. Increase our distribution to 150 Million
2. Expand meaningfully into Bangladesh, Iran, South Korea
3. Comprehensive and free Kabaddi Skills university

We aspire to open up Kabaddi content from our tournaments to reach more content creators and generate more value to organisers.

Cultural / Market Barriers - This market of tournament organizers, players and fans are only used to the age old tradition of having limited / no technology at their tournaments. e.g Scoring solutions don't exist, Sharing outside of their own communities doesn't happen, capability to leave a lasting memory for fans doesn't exist. So they don't think these are even an option. Because the alternate is big name TV channels.

We are chipping away at this belief and the exponential growth in our access leads us to belive that solving this problem won't be linear in nature. Every community we touch is taking us to the surrounding community and evangelizing the solution

Financial + Technical , Having the capability to get enough of tier 2 & 3 towns, to recognize that they can be part of the solution and still be a recepient of a service will take some effort on behavioral design of product (Content translation to Bangla). 

Cultural Barrier: 

We have a team on the ground already working with the influencer communities (villages) - that have produced multiple national champions. Training upcoming players from here to take the solution outwards. 

Market Barrier:

Quickly document all leads and networks created from each community. Manually currently following up with communities to help get others on the scoring tool. Finding sponsors / Retail partners with significant penetration in these markets e.g distributors for brands relevant in smaller towns.

Technical : Hiring the necessary language skills locally.

Technology : Working with rural communities to understand product utility and understand real impediments to sale

• Conduct 8 Kabaddi Adda franchise tournaments across the 8 districts of Bangladesh in 2020. 
• This will enable the creation of spaces where Kabaddi can be played
• Players and coaches from India to train and upskill Bangladeshi players
• Conduct Referee up-skilling programs
• Creation of 2-3 Bangladeshi star Kabaddi players - this will help catalyse amateurs players take up the sport of Kabaddi
• Connect with local academies

All of the above will help Kabaddi Adda tournaments gain popularity and significance.  

Founding Team - 5

Technology & Development - 4

Social - 1

Partnerships - 2

Part-time - 3 

All of us have relevant domain experience and startup, technology expertise.

Suhail Chandhok - Ran a marketing –PR firm (sports focussed) Adrenna Communications. As the commentator who was behind the mic from Day 1 of PKL he has deep networks across all key players in the PKL and Star ecosystem (and may be characterised as the ‘Harsha Bhogle’ of kabaddi)

Arvind Sivdas – Helped teams prepare for and run 3 auctions. Kabaddi thinker, problem solver and CEO at Kabaddi Adda 

Dhanya Parameshwaran/ Srikanth Vishwanathan - Run analytics and data driven insights (for Chennai Super Kings cricket team), with Prakash Padukone and to help kabaddi teams in preparation auctions.  They lead our technology and AI thinking to evolve the data collection and automated video editing too.

Vikas Gautam – Interacted, had dinners and lived with the kabaddi players & coaches and in the academies. Has learned quickly over the last 11 months by living in kabaddi villages and understanding their way of life.

Each of our experiences has helped us to broaden our scope but focus our solution to being an ecosystem connector in order to deliver an engaging fan experience.

• We have data, analytics partnnerships with multiple Prokabaddi League teams in India
• We are the data and technology solutions partner with ESPN, SPORTSTAR, Daily Hunt and other regional news dailies
• We are distribution and content creation partners with Red Bull, Thumbs Up
• We have partnered with Dream 11 for Prokabaddi League

We aggregate Kabaddi tournaments in a franchise model. The partner tournaments follow a set standardization practices.  We give tournaments access to our fan reach, distribution networks, data collection resources and content curation solution. This gives tournaments greater reach, relevance while giving fans an enriching experience. 

1. Long-term Local Sponsors and Online ads/sponsors for tournaments is our key revenue model
2. Tournament organizer helps with cost coverage
3. Tournament design drives a scalable consistent content sourcing and curation.
4. Transaction fees for connecting partners, helping teams with scouting, helping academies with candidate sourcing.

We are a seed funded company and the growth from inception and post the fund raise has been spectacular. We have our revenue pipelines already piloted and believe in its scalability. Already, unlike most content businesses we have dropped our content sourcing and creation costs to a small fraction of industry benchmarks - through our proprietary in-house tools for video creation.

In steady state we aim to have the following key revenue pipelines. 

• Our online and offline assets will be key for brands looking to connect meaningfully to non-urban audiences. This kind of Sponsorship, product placement and advertisements  will be fast growing piece contributing to almost 50% of net revenues
• Data driven Scouting and data access fees from Prokabaddi league franchisees.
• Ad space revenues from all online assets - either as an influencer or mostly as a brand believer. 
• Revenues from the Kabaddi University online channel and on learning platforms. 
• Content sales and distribution to sports divisions of key publications and channels looking to engage audience with sports content

The Funding from Tiger Challenge will boost us to invest significant time and effort and resources in evolving the sport of Kabaddi in Bangladesh. The rise and popularity of cricket in Bangladesh is precursor to Kabaddi story.

We need local networks to partner with local Kabaddi federations, Sports ministry and local newspapers to get integrated and accepted locally. This will help us reach tournaments and academies quickly.

We need opportunities and settings to be able to evangelize the impact Kabaddi has on the rural, local enemies.

1. Bangladesh Kabaddi Federation which organises Walton 16th Premier Division Kabaddi League 2019 Super League

2. Ministry of Youth and Sports, Bangladesh

3. Local newspapers like Bangladesh Pratidin, Prothom Alo, Kaler Kantho

4. Popular Award winning players from yesteryears

5. Local TV Channels