Locobuddy Mobile Technology Pvt. Ltd, which runs sports and fitness discovery portal Sportobuddy, has raised $1.5 million (about Rs 98 lakh) in a seed round from former IPL team owner Mehul Shah.
Sportobuddy, which was founded by Sandeep Madhavan and Sunil Kukadia in August 2015, will use the money to push the brand’s digital initiative and reach out to its expanding user-base.
Before going on their own, Madhavanhad had served Havas Worldwide and Adoobe, while Kukadia had stints in Freemont Digital and Culinary Cart.
Sportobuddy allows users to discover and interact with fellow-players, , measure one’s own performances, and host tournaments to compete with others besides getting information on gyms, yoga and Zumba studios, and adventure sports including rafting, para-sailing and trekking. It also offers courts and turfs with professional coaching services.
In a similar space, Singapore-based Agnificent Platform Technologies Pte. Ltd, which runs crowd-managed platform Khel Now, had raised $350,000 from Anglian Omega Network last October.
Multiple fitness discovery platforms, operating on a model similar to the US-based ClassPass and Singapore-based KFit, have also raised funding over the past six months.
In June, gym and fitness centre discovery platform FiTraQ had raised an undisclosed amount in a bridge round led by Aparup Sengupta, the operating partner at Singapore-based investment firm Capital Square Partners, and Devendra Reddy, a sales and marketing veteran who had previously worked at EXL, WNS Global Services, and HCL.
Mumbai-based health and fitness discovery platform Growfitter Pvt. Ltd, too had secured $600,000 in a pre-Series A round from venture capital firm SQue Capital in May 2016, while mobile marketplace for gym memberships Fitnapp had raised pre-Series A funding from Noida-based real estate developer SD Group in January.
FitMeIn and Fitternity are the other leading fitness centre aggregators in India.