MUMBAI: leAD Sports, the sports entrepreneurship platform backed by the adidas’ Adi Dassler Family Office (ADFO), is looking to build a strong connect with Indian sports start-ups through ADvantage, its $70-million Series A sports tech fund, Economic Times reports.
ADvantage is co-owned by world-renowned hybrid venture capital platform, OurCrowd. The fund has already tapped into the Indian market through $10 million investments with sports tech companies such as Tappp, owned by Mumbai’s Sandy Agarwal.
leAD on the other hand, has been mentoring Rooter, the Delhi-based sports fan engagement platform, having selected the company for its prestigious accelerator program back in Germany. In the process, Rooter became the first Indian firm to receive the honour and now has its plans set to utilise Germany as its launchpad to grow in Europe.
Along with ADFO, leAD will be in India in February 2019 to review the market as well as the 350 applications it has received from Indian sports entrepreneurs for its accelerator program. It also plans to convince investors and business families in other fields to co-invest in the booming Indian sports business and tech market.
leAD Sports CEO Christoph Sonnen was quoted as saying to ET:
“We will be visiting India in February next year.
“India is a huge sports market, which goes far beyond cricket. As sports continue to gain space in the country, new opportunities in the ecosystem arise. We want to leverage this momentum and continue to nurture early-stage startups that can disrupt the mobile, tech-focused Indian market.
“We have just started the second batch of our accelerator programme for pre-seed and seed funding. Between first and second batch we received 350 applications from Indian sports tech startup owners alone. This year we have picked up 9 out of a total of 600 applications for the programme, which has only one Indian company, Rooter.
“We have a network of 6,000 companies globally and we want to educate Indian VCs and family offices about this big opportunity in sports tech. We have seen that Indians have a deep-understanding of tech, but they all are investing into fintech or other established businesses.
“The disruption in sports tech is yet to come and can give 7-9X returns over an 8-year investment,” Sonnen signed off.
