Pune, December seventh, 2022: GoPllay, a part of Breathe Sports, a Pune-based sports activities expertise startup, launched its platform for its customers as we speak. The firm has raised an undisclosed quantity from distinguished angel buyers based mostly out of India & overseas in its pre-seed funding spherical. It has additionally just lately been funded by Google, the place it obtained US$ 100K below the Google for Startups Cloud Program, in credit. The funding won’t solely handle the preliminary tech infrastructure prices but additionally put the corporate in a choose group of startups backed by Google. The recent funds raised will predominantly be used for crew constructing, creating expertise for the app and person acquisition. The app has been launched on the Google Play retailer, and shall quickly be out there on the IOS retailer as effectively.

GoPllay was co-founded in April 2021 by Dhruv Sharma, an IIM-Lucknow & Harvard Business School (HBS) alumnus and Nishant Oberoi, an alumnus of University of Wales, with a complicated finance program from INSEAD, Singapore. The core crew has over 4 a long time of wealthy & complimentary expertise amongst them, together with Ashutosh Sharma who was acqui-hired into the founding crew to guide expertise, as he comes with wealthy expertise having labored with Amazon & Infosys previously. GoPllay is a verticalized sports activities social community for leisure sports activities lovers to attach, interact and play wherever, whether or not inside society premises, rooftops, backyards, places of work or at-home! And after all, on courts and grounds. Features like scoring video games and showcasing one’s sports activities persona makes it very thrilling for sports activities lovers to discover and have interaction on GoPllay. With “PllayAnywhere©” because it’s mantra, the corporate goals to democratize sports activities by constructing a sturdy international group of leisure gamers, followers and influencers via participating content material, enjoyable challenges, insightful analytics and gamification to drive actual bodily sports activities.

A consortium of 11 distinguished buyers have invested in GoPllay. Karan Swani is an HBS alum & former Senior Director on the non-public fairness agency, KKR (India), and now the founder & CEO of a multi-family workplace in Toronto, Canada specializing in early stage & various investments. He has efficiently invested in a number of startups on the seed & early levels. Dr. Kulkarni is the MD of Elkay Chemicals & a part of CII management in Pune, Nitin is a former non-public banker & investor based mostly in Singapore, Manas, a Sales chief at Google, India, Prateek, a younger industrialist from Kolkata. Akhil and Dhruv are buyers from the sporting ecosystem, and are managing distinguished Indian athletes like Ajinkya Rahane. They each additionally include sturdy model connects within the sporting trade

The startup can be lucky to depend 4 distinguished girls angels because it’s buyers. “This is special since one of our objectives is to promote more women in active recreational sports, and having women believe & invest in a sport-tech startup like ours is a big step towards achieving this.”, says Nishant Oberoi, one of many Founders of GoPllay. Hanisha is a Managing Director at InCred Global Wealth based mostly in Singapore, Pearl, an entrepreneur in India, Ruchi, a company lawyer from UK and Kirti, a senior skilled in UK.

On their advisory panel Gopllay has Shiva Keshavan, President of the Olympians Association of India, a six-time Winter Olympian and a four-time Asian Champion within the sport of Luge, in addition to a pair different sports activities professionals with deep connections in trade.

Nishant Oberoi mentioned, “Sports is the most powerful activity that has an amazing power to unify, engage and motivate. We are excited to launch our app and close the pre-seed funding round from prominent investors. Me & Dhruv play Tennis regularly, amongst other sports, and it is through our own sporting journey as recreational players, that we realized that vast gaps existed in this space, and hence we set out to bridge these gaps. Through GoPllay we aim to bring all sports enthusiasts on one platform to share their sporting journey, connect with more players and encourage others to play. The tech platform will also let you share your sporting experiences such as sporty photos & videos, just like you use your other social media platforms. We are happy that the investors believed in our idea and the vision to create a unified digital ecosystem for the recreational sports community that will benefit all stakeholders.”

“We are a B2C startup, with a blended B2B2C acquisition strategy” and therefore, GoPllay has collaborated with corporates like Brookfield, a US$750+ Billion international asset administration firm, universities like The MIT University in Pune, which has over 60,000 college students throughout a number of campuses, and sports activities golf equipment just like the Ryders Club, which has over 10K members throughout NCR in India. GoPllay, utilizing its expertise platform, will allow seamless group of bodily sporting occasions & leagues inside such campuses, while selling sports activities as an total well being & enjoyable exercise for all!”