Kabaddi Adda - Home for India's home grown sport

PROBLEM

• Coverage is limited - Kabaddi content, especially in vernacular language and an online resource to learn the sport.
• Offering is inconsistent - Repetitive content, lack of data and information sources.

SOLUTION : A consistent measurable way for sponsors looking to connect to India B & C

• Delivering Value to Fans
• Helping Players better connect with Fans
• Helping upcoming players to build and evolve skills
• With Teams & Federations to aggregate and access key tournament data  

CREATE CHANGE FOR MILLIONS: Kabaddi League had a TV viewership of over 400 Million in its first season. A home grown sport which requires no equipment - just a playing field and some buddies and you're good to go!  We are changing the way Kabaddi is played; with the way data is being presented and collected; in a language of comfort. 

The journey of a kabaddi fan starts and ends at Prokabaddi League today leaving the fans disconnected with the sport for the rest of 9 months. 

• Commentators have limited perspective to share about players
• Fans get limited content on their favorite players and teams
• Most importantly, not in a language of their choice.
• New players aren’t able to find academies to up-skill themselves / showcase their skills to scouts for the League
• Academies aren’t able to showcase their credibility and vacancies to interested new players
• Teams aren’t able to efficiently scout for new talent
• Federations don’t have a way to market and live stream tournaments in a professional, profitable fashion
• No consistent digital resources to learn the 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. Our goal is to be meaningful to 50% of this 316 million in the next 5 years.

We currently reach out to Kabaddi fans through Whatsapp broadcast channel (5k subscribers), Youtube (86k+ subscribers) and Instagram (20k+ subscribers) accrued organically in the last 1 year. We travel to towns, associate with players and tournaments to collect, create and curate content for our audience. Kabaddi Adda website has 1000+ users everyday spending on an average 16+ minutes. We built a data collection tool to democratise Kabaddi information. These tools allow us to reach 150M+ users in next 5 years. 

Goal is to conduct a year round 'K7'-tournament, that happens monthly in small towns from Haryana to Tamil Nadu. A shorter version of Kabaddi, lasting 10 minutes, allowing more players to compete and channelize sponsor revenues directly back to these towns and villages of India. This will incentivise more young players to choose sport for a livelihood. 

We want to bridge this gap by connecting the ecosystem

• Support kabaddi clubs and federations in covering more tournaments. Through our DIY Live Streaming and Live scoring tools.
• Work with academies to create digital content to learn kabaddi, and connect them with people looking to learn the sport. Certify Academies and players on a ‘Kabaddi Adda Index’
• Create a structured platform and process to support new players to be discovered and upskilled by coaching and conditioning partners. Data from here will continue to enhance the ‘Kabadda Adda Player Index’
• Use all the information thus aggregated to deliver engaging news capsules for fans through all our distribution channels

We are changing Kabaddi using data collection and dissemination at the centre of content. This allows us to throw new light on an age old sport. 

Kabaddi players are currently easily accessible and taking their help to create content, curate fan feedback and evolve new connections (eg. Kabaddi academy source) is allowing us to disrupt this space. 

Using our Whatsapp channel we have a direct connect to our fans and thus a valuable source of information and guiding voice to decide next steps for content sourcing. 

The ability to get co-creators from within the community has been the biggest driver for our exponential growth over the last year. Our customers can all be creators of content, insights, information and promotors of their own tournaments- For a sport that is integral to their daily lives.

1. Tools for Scalable data collection : Built a product which allows users to collect and display data collected. We're now up-skilling referees, academies to make this tool the new normal in Kabaddi.
2. Stovi - stands for Story to Video - built using python this technology allows users to convert their text to videos in moments. 

Using these tools we are able to convert raw videos along with data into watchable content. 

Distribution Process Innovation:

3. We have created a loyal 4000+ Whatsapp broadcast channel, which allows our Instragram and Youtube channels to get a burst of views on the day of release, setting it up for virality. This distribution channel has grown rapidly and organically in just a year. 

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 

Dec 2019:

1. 10000 WhatsApp users (currently 4k),
2. 200000 youtube subscribers (currently 87k),
3. 300000 page views per month
4. 100 videos skills series listed on online learning platforms
5. Have a comprehensive website in 5 Languages (Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, English). Right now we are in Hindi and English. 
6. Tie up with 500 academies and help them recruit upto 10000 players
7. Player database of 2000 players (right now at 500+)

Dec 2023:

1. 200000 WhatsApp users
2. 10 Mil Youtube subscribers

Be the largest Social Network for India B & C, powered by our Automation tools (Video Creator, Voice to text scoring tool), and the real world social network of content creators itself being the main consumers. 

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 India 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 (in atleast 5 key Indian languages). Also the ability to quickly offer comprehensive communication channels to all incoming requests we are currently getting daily.

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 local FMCG brands.

Technical

Hiring the necessary language skills in house.

Technology

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

Founding Team - 5

Technology & Development - 4

Social - 1

Partnerships - 2

Part-time - 3 

All of us have relevant domain experience and expertise.

PKL (Kabaddi League)

Suhail - 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 – Ran 3 auctions, key strategist for Puneri Paltan. CEO at Messy Fractals 

Dhanya / Srikanth - Run analytics and data driven insights at MessyFractals – closely involved with Puneri Paltan. Srikanth has been a part of 2 PKL auctions. 

Vikas – 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.

1. All 12 franchises in the Prokabaddi League - 2nd Biggest sports league in the country.
2. With brands like Thums up, Red Bull, espn.in

1. Sponsorship for all key content themes we are able to advance.
2. Community helps with cost coverage, drives scalable consistent content sourcing and curation.
3. Management fees for connecting partners, helping teams with scouting, helping academies with candidate sourcing.

Revenues will fund the consistent growth of this business.

To build global awareness on the transformational impact of sports on local communities. How sports as a channel can be used to drive disproportionate progress in rural communities. 

Meet partners who would like to transform rural communities and offer ourselves as a vehicle for this outreach program. Our current reach + relevance to these communities will make this kind of a partnership a symbiotic one.

Find Advisors who will help us refine the execution of a mass distribution strategy for local markets, so as to get regular technology usage in all aspects of running and managing the sport.

UN bodies  - on Youth development, Education and Skill development.

This will help us scale our outreach to be much faster and help us become a medium to distribute more meaningful engagement for these communities. This being a truly win-win partnership.

Our current automation tools are using AI to help community members to create their own content. Given this product is currently built on Python in a limited environment, we need computing power to deploy this solution at scale. Also specific funding will be needed to get more real time deep learning to drive quicker, content curation by  lesser trained resources.