IP Ventures, Sucseed Partners back sports discovery app Sportido

Noida-based IDO Sports, which owns and operates sports discovery platform Sportido, has raised an undisclosed amount during its second round of funding led by venture capital firm Inflection Point Ventures (IP) and private investment firm Sucseed Venture Partners.

Insurance broking and securities trading company Sumpoorna Group is the other investor in the firm.

The company plans to deploy the fresh funds to expand its presence in the country to other cities, according to a statement.

Founded in 2015 by Neeraj Aggarwala and Akhil Ramachandran, Sportido is an application for sports and fitness enthusiasts. It helps its users discover places to play any sport with like-minded people. Users can also explore new sports, participate in events, and even find deals on clubs and gyms nearby.

Prior to founding Sportido, Aggarwala had founded Easypolicy Insurance Web Aggregators, which ran online insurance comparison portal Easypolicy.com. He has worked with companies like Sumpoorna Group, J.Walter Thompson Worldwide, Times Internet and Plok, whereas Ramachandran worked as an assistant product manager - IT in Aggarwala’s firm.

The company had last raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from IP Ventures in November 2018.

“This growth is primarily due to the loyalty of users and high repeat transactions. The average user has transacted 7 times in the last 6 months, which gives us a very high customer lifetime value,” said Ramachandran.

Sportido also provides venues with a facility management app Charge by Sportido, which enables them to track bookings and manage their customers and inventory, the statement added.

The platform competes with Book Your Game, PlaynLive, Sproloc and Playo, among others in this segment.

“Sportido is doing an amazing job in making these facilities accessible and developing the ecosystem so that it’s easy for common people to pursue sports. Sports is necessary for physical and mental fitness and a must for society as a whole,” said Mayank Jain, IP Ventures angel investor.

In 2016, it had raised an undisclosed amount in an angel round led by Sumpoorna Group.

Founded in 1999, IP Ventures provides seed and early-stage capital to the companies. It is based in Gurgaon and has an additional office in Delaware, US. Hyderabad headquartered Sucseed Ventures was founded in 2016. It provides seed and early-stage capital to companies operating in India.

Funding in the sports tech space remains sluggish. Sports engagement platform Rooter Sports Technologies had in  January raised Rs 1 crore from Anthill Ventures. The company had earlier raised Rs 4.5 crore in a seed round.