Much to the likes of Dhoni, Virat Kohli, and Yuvraj, Virender Sehwag lovingly known as the Nawab of Najafgarh too plunged into the athleisure space with his homegrown brand ‘VS’ an acronym of his name. Launched in March 2020, VS by Virender Sehwag aspires to achieve Rs 100 crore revenues in the next 3 years and wants to acquire 5 million customers across India in 5 years. The brand other than his former teammate’s lifestyle brand is also competing with international mega-brands like Adidas, Reebok, Nike, and Puma. 

With gyms and sports centres gathering dust, the need to be fit and active has increased in the pandemic, and so is the demand for activewear apparel. According to a study by Research and Markets, the activewear market in India is estimated to be Rs 997.8 billion by 2024, expanding at an annual growth rate of 13.5 percent during the 2019-2024 period. 

Growth Strategy of VS by Virender Sehwag 

Here are some of the strategies that are likely to be adopted by the brand to expand its share in the Indian athleisure market. 

• Attractive price range: Virender Sehwag himself belonging to a humble middle-class family understood there are hardly any sports brands that cater to the masses. The international sportswear brand’s steep price tags force consumers of tier-II and III cities to settle for inferior quality. The t-shirts available in VS brand costs between Rs 499-599, whereas the same shall cost Rs 3000-4000.
  
  
• Dedicated to cricket: None of his former teammate’s brands focuses on selling cricket kits and equipment such as batting gloves, bat, and pads on their websites directly, and affording the same from an international brand will be expensive. VS by Virender Sehwag offers gloves, knee pads, and gloves on its online store. 

At 18 he was a college dropout; he started his business career as a Pashmina shawl trader in the UK. Kundra today has stakes in more than 20 companies operating in trading, construction, real estate, energy, steel, shares, media, sports, cricket league, fighting league and gold trading.

Raj Kundra has achieved tremendous business success in his life despite coming from a small, middle class family. There are business and entrepreneurship lessons to be learned from his life.

Who is Raj Kundra?

Raj Kundra is popular in India as a British-Indian Businessman who moved to his home country India after his wedding with veteran Hindi artiste Shilpa Shetty. He is also well known for his brief but controversial IPL stint when he owned the Rajasthan Royals cricket team. But who is he really, and how did he land himself in the league of rich, Indian businessmen? Hailing from a middle-class family and humble beginnings, Raj Kundra’s entrepreneurial journey commenced when he ran a successful business supplying Pashmina Shawls in Nepal. This was his first grand success which established him as a key player in business and also earned him his first few millions. Kundra was awarded the Champions of Change Award in 2019, for his involvement with Swachh Bharat Mission. The award was conferred by former President of India Pranab Mukherjee at Vigyan Bhavan New Delhi on 20 January 2020. In 2004, he was ranked as the 198th richest British Asian by SUCCESS magazine.

Kundra was less known before he met Indian actress Shilpa Shetty who shot to global fame by winning the British reality show Big Brother in 2007. Two years later they were married, Kundra and Shetty then set sail for Mumbai. This is where Kundra planned to become a film producer and Shetty dabbled in Bollywood once more and tried her hands in fitness, yoga and spa businesses.

From Shah Rukh Khan becoming a teacher in Byju’s new ad highlighting after-school learning to Pankaj Tripathi showing Kirana store owners ease of doing business on Udaan app, Indian start-ups have been all in with their advertising spend.

Be it Indian Premier League (IPL) on a TV Channel, an episode of your favourite show on an over-the-top (OTT) platform, a fitness video on Youtube or casual Instagram scrolling, you cannot ignore the growing number of ads by start-ups that are ruling the break time.

Nothing New, Yet Unusual: What Changed?

It is not new for start-ups to go aggressive with advertisements in attracting and retaining customers in their growth stage. Back in 2015, we saw a huge surge in ad spends by e-commerce start-ups like Myntra, Flipkart and Snapdeal as the industry boomed. This trend picked up pace over the years with start-ups riding a particular industry boom (e-commerce, e-retail, edtech) each year, putting in big cheques in advertisement.

This number was expected to rise in future. However, something has been unusual in the past one or two years, especially post pandemic. According to media buyers’ estimates, start-ups now account for 10% in India’s advertising expenses. The overall ad spend may hit Rs 80,000 crore in 2021. This means 8,000-8,500 crore (10%) has come from new-age companies. No doubt, the surge was expected, but not to the level of 10%.

Besides developing a big advertising appetite, the start-ups have gone a step further and overshadowed big brands across many platforms. What happened in the past one year? Let’s find out.

Any sport is a big source of entertainment and an important factor that unites the nation. It fills an individual with a nationalistic feeling irrespective of his/her social and economic background. And Cricket is indeed a very popular sport in India. It is like a religion!

IPL Genesis and Structure

A shortened form of cricket existed in the ‘cricket world’ since the 1990s but the Twenty20 (T20) format was officially established in 2003. In 2007, the cricket world saw a bigger paradigm shift with the inaugural ‘Twenty20 World Cup’ by the International Cricket Council (ICC) which was quite exciting.

India understood at a very early stage that T20 is the new course. With the growing popularity of the format in the world, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) founded the ‘Indian Premier League’ (IPL) in 2008. And IPL became the professional T20 cricket league and one of the most-watched formats of cricket in India. 

IPL is usually contested between March and May of every year with eight teams playing in India’s major cities with a team of ‘global cricket talent’. Each player in the team is acquired through an auction in three ways (the annual player auction, trading players and signing replacements for unavailable players). By 2022, we may see two more teams joining the club.

Unique Selling Point (USP)

Bollywood and Cricket is adored in India. And, by combining Sports and glamour, India became the first country to form this unique form of IPL. It gathered a huge fan following and great viewership.

IPL’s USP is its structure. Limited to 20 overs and 3 hours’ duration makes it good enough to hold back the viewers leading to high excitement. IPL is a fast-paced game that attracts huge viewership on television, other digital platforms and also keeps the attention of the spectators present on the ground. The shorter version is much closer to the time-span of other popular team sports. Thus, it became an instant hit with the audience in India and abroad.

Be it Amir Khan’s Lagaan, Shahrukh Khan’s Chak De India or Priyanka Chopra’s Mary Kom, these movies reflect the deep-rooted relationship between India and sports. Start-ups are leveraging on this relationship and coming up with their unique discoveries. Combining technology and sport, start-ups have created some of the best sports apps and services in the country.

The top 10 sport start-ups in India and what makes them the best.

Dream 11

This unicorn start-up is now a well-established name in and out of the sports world. Sponsoring the IPL to bring fantasy platform in India, the start-up continues raising bars higher and higher. Users on their platform can play fantasy cricket, basketball, hockey, volleyball, football, kabaddi, handball, rugby or even baseball. With more than 10 crore users, they are determined to set new records every day.

SportsApp

SportsApp is a platform integrated simply for connecting one sport lover to another. The app has a wide range of players who have played at different levels and have different experiences. SportsApp was launched to get all players together on their platform. Founded in 2018, the start-up has received funding of $50,000 in its angel round in August 2019.

Adda52

When it comes to playing the right cards, the founders of Adda52 know it all. The Delhi-based start-up allows players to play several card games online with real money. The growing popularity of this start-up led to their merger with Delta Corp in 2017. Indians have always been fond of card games and to no surprise, their app holds more than 20 lakh downloads. Their authentic and easy payment process has bought in popularity amongst users.

Mobile Premier League

Mobile Premier League popularly known as MPL is a tech start-up based in Bangalore. Directly competing with Dream 11, MPL is also a widespread name in the fantasy cricket industry. The company has received fundings from Sequoia Capital India, BeeNext and Times Internet. Their total funding reportedly amounts to $40.5 million. The platform has one of the most popular faces in India, Virat Kholi as their brand ambassador.

“Not everyone gets it”, even Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Bappi Lahiri and Govinda. Intrigued? The goal was to start a conversation and it was indeed started among 40 million customers on CRED’s target list through its audition-styled campaign launched on India’s biggest advertising platform – IPL.

It has been raining start-ups when it comes to IPL associations since 2020. One of them being credit card bill-based rewards marketplace CRED, which joined the bandwagon of start-ups looking to score big with IPL and it indeed did.

The partnership came into being in September 2020 and within six months, CRED has managed to raise two rounds of funding (Series C and D) and successfully entered the billion dollar club. Was the start-up’s bet on the IPL association its ticket to the billion dollar club? Let’s find out.

Did it Make Sense?

CRED reportedly paid Rs 120 crore ($16.3 million) to become an official partner of the IPL for three seasons, starting the first one in October 2020.

With this additional investments and incentives it offers to users, CRED knew that it would be spending $12-15 million per year – almost 10% of its total funding. (Before Series C and D). CRED had ballooned its total loss by 491.9% in FY20, with the largest contributor, for the reported period, being costs relating to marketing activities. It rose over 9X year-on-year to Rs 180.30 crore.

Seeing these numbers, why did CRED become a part of this expensive sponsorship game amidst the mounting expenses and losses? The company targets credit card bill payments and it already had 60% of the total audience on the platform. Then why play such a “big game” for just 40% of the remaining target audience? Remember, this was before the Series C and D rounds.

A Ticket to the $1 Billion Club

It was a “go big or go home” scenario for CRED. Start-ups, especially fintech, have been looking to expand or raise their market share significantly and affiliation with a property like IPL is a win-win scenario.

CRED has been in a cashburn process (EBITDA margin of -1979.5% during FY20, annual loss of Rs 360.3 crore) but has been well-funded by deep-pocketed investors. Before its association with IPL, CRED stood at a valuation of about $450 million that it had attained after its $120 million Series B round in 2019 besides its seed funding of $30 Million.

Hence, its IPL investment made business sense for the start-up and did not dramatically affect its cash flows. The ultimate aim was to increase user base and target and attract credit-worthy customers to justify the investors’ money. Since its inception, the company grew to a customer base of 3 million and post joining the IPL, the number surged multifold. The user base has doubled to 5.9 million individuals in 2021 over the past year.

The Indian Premier League is an international event. A lot of money goes into conducting this most-watched event every year. Cricket fans must be wondering who owns the teams of this cash-rich league. So, here are the owners of each IPL franchise:

Rajasthan Royals 

Indian businessman Manoj Badale (Emerging Media IPL Ltd) is the majority shareholder of the team with over 50% stake followed by Amisha Hathiramani from Nigeria-based Tresco International Ltd. Lachlan Murdoch is an Australian-British-American businessman and his Blue Water Estate Ltd owns 11.7% shares in the franchise.  Former Australian cricketer Shane Warne himself represented the team in the initial few seasons. After retirement, he took up the co-ownership of the popular franchise through his undergarment brand called as ‘Spinners’. The former cricketer owns 3% share in the team.

Chennai Super Kings

The franchise is owned by Chennai Super Kings Cricket Ltd. which is a subsidiary of India Cements, managed by Narayanaswami Srinivasan. The industrialist, who is also former ICC chairman and BCCI president, has been in the cricket game for decades. Despite all the controversies, he has been credited for raising India’s profile on the international stage.

Delhi Capitals 

The team is jointly owned by JSW Sports and GMR Sports Pvt Ltd under a common entity called JSW GMR Cricket Private Limited. Managing director of JSW Group, Parth Jindal is one of the youngest franchise owners in the IPL. The ambitious entrepreneur, who has been eager to carve his own path, has been at the forefront in steering the sports division of the steel major business conglomerate JSW Group. He took over the charge of Delhi Daredevils in 2018 and rebranded it to Delhi Capitals, brought in Sourav Ganguly as mentor and went in with a very clear auction strategy. Today, the franchise has the most balanced and strong squad. 

Co-owner Kiran Kumar Grandhi nurtured the franchise for 10 years before getting into a 50% partnership with JSW in 2018. Besides solidifying the core team, both the scions involved a number of new age enterprises from the Tech space which were complemented by their own well-established national brands and created Delhi Capitals as a formidable IPL brand.

In a celebratory development for Indian start-ups, Unacademy, an Indian ed-tech firm bagged the title of ‘Official Sponsor’ for 3 seasons of the IPL starting the 2020 edition. 

Unacademy steals the spotlight

Unacademy is a Bengaluru based EdTech start-up which along with its comrades brought disruption into the Indian education sector and found favour in the market owing to the solution it presented to the Covid problem.

Unacademy is considered a ‘high-intensity’ brand and had set its sights high to win the ‘title sponsorship’ which Dream 11 dramatically stole, and which we have already witnessed. 

Unacademy was matched in competency by its nemesis Byju’s which was also battling for both title sponsorship as well as for becoming the ‘Official sponsor’.

Unacademy will retain its ‘official sponsor’ title from the 13th chapter of the Premier League which already concluded in November last year.

After Future Group announced that it would be taking a step back from last year’s IPL, Unacademy’s path was cleared, and they didn’t hesitate to pump in almost 120-130 INR crores to seal their position for the next 3 seasons.

The EdTech sector participated in a very blatant showdown in the IPL 2020. Byju’s has already joined hands with the International Cricket Council (ICC). Whereas Unacademy was over enthusiastic for taking on Vivo in its race for the Title Sponsorship.

Still, Unacademy has relentlessly been pursuing Vivo who are on the lookout for a suitable company to exit out of the IPL deal by transferring their title sponsorship rights.

If Unacademy  successfully makes an offer to help Vivo pay the cricket board a balance of INR 1436 Cr, the former will be assigned rights and Vivo can exit.