Prime Minister Modi recently said - “Sports should become a part of our lives. If we are a young nation, our youth should get manifested in the field sports as well. Sports means physical fitness, mental alertness and personality enhancement. What else does one need? Sports, in a way, is a recipe that brings people together.”

Idealizing the same recipe, is team Playo, a one stop sports platform that endeavours to help adults rediscover active sports.The founders had perceived that urban Indian adults were looking for means to fulfil their social, recreation and fitness needs – all of which could be catered to simultaneously by sports. Needless to say, they foundan immense opportunity to use sports to invigorate passions and help shape the minds of the nation and its youth in a positive way. The power of this value and the opportunity to make a difference is what drew them to the idea of forming Playo. “Our core value proposition of helping adults play again is what we believe differentiates us in terms of methodology and space both. The demand for people wanting to

reconnect with sports is unbelievably high – historically this demand has remained latent. Playo brings out the purest of human emotions and helps people regain balance, build bonds and reduce work life stress. Our focus has been to try and remind them this, while also ensuring that intent is turned into action through our platform. This has helped us grow largely through word-of-mouth, in app referrals and other organic means which probably accounts for our ‘trending’ in the market!” enthusiastically explains Gauravjeet Singh, CEO, Playo.

Playo, today has over 3.5 lakh active sports/fitness users, making it the largest online community of its kind globally and a pioneering one-stop platform for sports

At the start, the major roadblock the team came across was the lack of a recognized category and market. While this provided a virgin territory to them, it also meant going beyond and helping to catalyse and knit an entire ecosystem together. In the first year, team Playo grew to merely 25,000 users and had less than a dozen partner facilities and organizers on their platform. However, with zeal and dedication, they soon added over 2.5 lakh users and 500partners in the second year besides launching in other cities and in the UAE.

Throwing light on the growth story, Gauravjeet speaks,

"Fundamentally, we help users overcome the two biggest lacunas they face– whom to play with and where to play at – both of which are equally important for a game to happen. Our ‘social network’ helps people connect with other users in their areas based on availability, skills, interests and join playgroups around them.”

A native mobile platform available on iOS and Android, Playo records user’s activity to help them maintain their playing profile and history while also adding to his community skill rating and rankings in context to his playing social network. Then there is the function of being able to discover and book courts/grounds on-demand without memberships. Users can also explore and register for relevant sports, fitness and recreation activities and training centres in the city based on their interests. “Our aim is to move towards a contextualized and personalized platform based on the individual user’s profile which offers various engagement and utility features,” he mentions.

Currently, Playo has over 3.5 lakhs users across Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Dubai. The company has tied up with over 500 sports venues, 1000 event and activity providers and 500 coaching academies.“We have been fortunate to get great mentors like Sanjeev Bhikchandani of Naukri.com, Shradha Sharma ofYourStory, Bharati Jacob ofSeedfund, Ashish Goel of Urban Ladder, Gaurav Manchanda of Manchanda Capital and Eric Savage of Unitus Capital among others,” he mentions.