Start-up of the week: Young turks set their sights on sporting infrastructure

Their business involves leasing land on a long-term basis and raising investment from investors to develop state of the art sporting infrastructure in the state. The team has currently built three top class badminton courts on ECR that is already running full. 

Run by brothers Varun and Vikram Vairavan, Sports Company was the off-shoot of another original plan. “We started with this venture last October. The initial idea was to create an app that would help users locate the closest facility based on the sports they played. That project didn’t take off. We realised that the reason why the previous project didn’t take off was because of the absence of ample sporting facilities. That’s when we decided to enter this space,” says Vikram, who quit his banking job to pursue his passion for sports. 

He further explains, ‘Badminton is a sport that everyone has played at some point in their lives. It is an indoor game which needs to be played on wooden floor, which is expensive. What the managements of some courts do here is lay a concrete floor and cover it with a carpet. This could result in a serious knee injury.” 

The cost of constructing three courts with top facilities cost up to Rs 80 lakh. He adds, “Since I  come from a banking background, I had a solid business plan in place. It helped us get investors who have backed us throughout. The challenge was finding lands at reasonable rates. If land is available, people want to build malls. However, I got a lot of support from folks in the fraternity and they guided me. The ecosystem needs more people and there is wide scope for growth,” says Vikram, who has a major project in the pipeline.