From The GROUND UP - The SFA Newsletter (Edition 5)
The rise and rise of Indian sports tech
Dear reader,
We’re back this week with a fresh edition of From the GROUND UP.
When this letter hits your inboxes, our Bengaluru Championships will be moving towards its conclusion, while the action hits the halfway mark in Pune. We’re not done just yet, with more grassroots sporting action in Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Mumbai lined up through the next two weeks.
And hey, we’re doubling down! Our flagship newsletter From the GROUND UP is going offline too. In Bengaluru, we kicked off a panel discussion with Olympians and business leaders, we’ll be at it again in Ahmedabad. So, if you are up for some stimulating discussions on building India’s sporting grassroots literally from the ground up, do come down to our venues. More details on this are in the section below.
A bit of the usual housekeeping: In case you just signed up, the newsletter will hit your inboxes every other week and keep you up to scratch with everything in sports, the business of it, policy, advocacy and the grassroots. If someone shared this newsletter with you or if you’ve found the online version, please hit the subscribe button below. The good news? It’s free!
With that, let’s dive right in!
KEEPING UP (with the sports world)
Indian Women Let Their Sticks Dazzle
Over the last few years, India’s men's hockey stars have hogged the limelight, courtesy of their impressive showings on the world stage. But India’s women’s hockey team isn’t far behind. A medal eluded them in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but a setback followed when the Indian women failed to qualify for the 2024 edition in Paris. Now, with the dust of the non-qualification fully settled, things are looking up again.
On Wednesday, they successfully defended their Asian Champions Trophy crown, beating China 1-o in the final in Rajgir, Bihar. Deepika, a 20-year-old forward from Haryana’s Hisar scored the winning goal. With 11 hits, she ended the tournament as its leading goal scorer.
Late bloomer: Deepika’s rise has coincided with India’s rebuild act towards the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Her story gets better when you consider that hockey wasn’t even her first sport. It was wrestling, which is only natural since she belonged to a family of wrestlers. But it was a sport she didn’t exactly enjoy, and hence for a girl deeply into sport, hockey took over. Deepika is also slightly unorthodox, a forward who also drag-flicks (duties that are typically shouldered by defenders), making her a double threat.
At last: Sticking with hockey (no puns intended), Odisha, the state synonymous with the sport’s recent rise in India, won the 14th Hockey India Senior Men National Championship 2024. Odisha defeated Haryana 5-1 in the final. This was Odisha’s first-ever tournament on the national stage and a testament to the sport’s deep-rooted traditions among the state’s tribal population.
THE SCOREBOARD (on the business of sport)
Decoding India’s SportsTech Ecosystem
Over the last decade, India has been quietly cranking it up in sports tech—loosely defined as using technology to improve the overall sports ecosystem. This includes helping athletes improve their training methods and on-field performance using data and analyses, while also enhancing the overall experiences, including those of fans and businesses.
A recent SportsTechX report estimates that by the time the year ends, 2024 would have seen nearly $10 billion in deal flow in sports tech—which includes $2.9 billion in funding rounds and $6.7 billion in mergers and acquisitions. That’s just the tech side of it. The actual sports industry has been pretty busy too, accounting for $37 billion in M&A activity this year, with fans at the heart of it.
You can click on the image above to read what the report has to say about SFA.
The big doughs: Today, India is among the top investment destinations for sports tech, having raised over 3 billion dollars between 2020 and 2024. India also has the fourth largest number of startups in the space, trailing only the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany in 2024. Indian sports tech startups have raised $50.2 million in 2024, a tad higher than Japan ($34.4 million), and Australia ($23.3 million). This year has seen relatively low volumes of deals, particularly in the first half.
Breaking down: Mumbai saw the lion’s share of funding activity between 2020 and 2024. However, in the current year, Bengaluru broke into the top 10 cities globally, with startups in the city raising $33.3 million. Having raised $1.5 billion and $624.6 million respectively, India’s Dream11 and CureFit are among the most funded sports tech companies in the world.
THE NEXT LEVEL (and how you can get there)
We can’t talk about the business of sports without playing the sport itself, because at Sports For All, we’re on a mission to help everyone fall in love with sports and take the field. To this effect, our section The Next Level, will help you improve your gameplay with some exciting lessons: techniques, drills, and exercises.
In this edition, we’ll pick a field event familiar to us Indians (and growing in popularity): the javelin throw, which as we’ll learn is not as easy as you running up to bowl fast (in cricket) and throwing the ball. It’s a common school ground misconception. So let’s do this nice and proper.
A javelin, as we know, has a tip and a tail. The tip is what lands in the field, while the tail is what points to the back. The most important thing while throwing a javelin, starts with the grip—which has to be well-aligned and help you control the angles. The next step is acceleration, which as the German javelin thrower Thomas Röhler says, is a “normal run”, before a critical juncture. That’s when the javelin is aligned well right next to your face—not too high, not too low.
That juncture is the crossover, which is typically three or four steps before you throw. The fourth phase is how you break: which is right towards the end. You land on the accelerating foot (same as your throwing hand), and block with the other foot. Why? The first foot brings the force, and the other applies the brake. And finally, the throw, which is everything you prepare for. What do you do here? Follow the technique. The head goes up, and the javelin is under the elbow (a nifty trick to prevent injuries), with a majority of the force coming from your hips.
What goes without saying: do not try this at home. What also goes without saying, please pick up that javelin, hit your school ground, and get throwing!
FROM OUR DUGOUT
An Ode To The Grassroots
It was quite the atmosphere at the Padukone-Dravid Centre for Excellence in Bengaluru, epitomising the celebration of grassroots sports. In the second edition of the SFA Championships in the city, we had over 18,463 athletes from 458 schools battling it out across 22 sports.
From The GROUND UP went offline on Sunday, with a lively discussion on the sidelines of the Championships, with some of India’s elite athletes such as swimmer Srihari Nataraj, shooter Tilottama Sen, and 2024 Paralympics bronze medalist Manisha Ramadass.
Tough journey: Ramadass, the 19-year-old para-badminton athlete from Tamil Nadu, picked up badminton in sixth grade. Her journey to the podium in Paris wasn’t easy, pitted against the Chinese and the home nation France. Ramadass spoke about her single-minded focus, which meant forgoing other tournaments to train towards that one goal. “Paris was special for me,” she told us. “I didn’t expect to win a medal. I just wanted to give my best in every point and match. Unexpectedly, I won. My hard work and dedication paid off.”
Process matters: Nataraj, who represented India in Paris, had a word of advice for the gathered athletes, parents, and coaches. “Sport is more about being the best version of yourself. Be honest with training and give your best in competition; then you can live with results, whatever they are. The results, you can’t control but the values and principles you learn from the process, you will not find anywhere else.”
Pandemic push: The 16-year-old Sen has seen a meteoric rise in India’s shooting circles. Last year, she won silver in the women’s 10m air rifle event at the 2023 Asian Shooting Championship, earned India an Olympics quota, and narrowly missed the trip to Paris. Her achievements are stunning considering that Sen has been shooting only for four years—a pandemic-time nudge from her father to stop playing video games and undertake physical activity.
Netflix’s Coming Out Party
Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson. We never thought we could string those two names together in a sentence, let alone the boxing ring, but it happened. While the 27-year-old YouTuber-turned-professional boxer Paul may have defeated Tyson, a little over twice his age via unanimous decision, the real winner of the Saturday event turned out to be…Netflix.
The streaming giant was using the bout as a launchpad for its foray into live sport. And that, by consensus, seems to have started well. By well, we mean breaking records. The fight, Netflix says, “is the most-streamed sporting event ever”, with a peak concurrency of 65 million streams, with 38 million concurrent streams in the US. That number surpasses the 2023 Cricket World Cup final between India and Australia, which saw a peak concurrency of 59 million streams.
Concurrency aside, Netflix claims to have drawn 108 million viewers globally, despite being plagued by technical glitches such as buffering, lagging, and freezing during the bout. 108 million is a big number, which only means one thing: ka-ching for Netflix and a strong big jab at its rivals.
That just about does it for this edition. If you have any feedback or comments on the newsletter, please write to us at <newsletter@sfaplay.com>. We’d love to hear from you.
See you in a couple of weeks! Until then, all the best to cracking that hundred-meter dash!
Rohan Vyavaharkar
Partnerships & Strategic Communications, SFA
Belive In Fast Work