The fund aims to make 15-18 investments with an initial ticket size of Rs 8 crore to Rs 24 crore to support startups across sports, fitness, wellness and social gaming. It will also participate in follow-on rounds.
Founder and general partner Mustafa Ghouse said investor interest reflects the structural shift in how Indians train, play, consume and monetise sport. A tennis-player-turned-VC, Ghouse is the former chief operating officer of JSW Sports.
“Globally, this (sports tech) is not new; dozens of dedicated funds exist and have done very well. India may be 15-20 years behind in some areas, but we believe we will scale faster because of macro trends,” the Ghouse told ET. The fund has already invested in six companies and plans to strengthen and scale its portfolio over the next two years, he said.
The fund is backed also by domestic institutional investors including Sidbi, SRI, and family offices such as Premji Invest, SanRaj Group and GMR Sports. Indian athletes and startup founders including Neeraj Chopra, Rishabh Pant, PV Sindhu, Jemimah Rodrigues, Binny Bansal, Mithun Sacheti and Ankit Nagori have also participated.
Speaking about if enough founders are innovating in sports tech in India, Ghouse said conversations are active with second-time founders or former CXOs at successful startups who are now choosing sports tech as their next venture.
Ghouse, who also led acquisitions and operations for sports franchises in the cricket (IPL), football (ISL) and kabaddi (PKL) leagues, said with India hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2030 and aspiring to host the 2036 Olympics, there is massive momentum in sports tech. “It’s the right time to build in this sector,” he added.
With a sector-focused lens, the firm said digital gaming remained a multibillion-dollar opportunity with strong year on year growth driven by deeper mobile usage and improved monetisation.
Limited partners got comfortable knowing a sector-expert team is curating high-quality deal flow, Ghouse said. The bigger task was educating them on the depth of the Indian market. “Many think sports in India are just IPL plus a few leagues. Once they saw our portfolio and pipeline, they understood the scale,” he said.
The fund sees opportunities in categories such as fitness, nutrition, recovery, pain management, e-sports and mass participation sports such as running, cycling and climbing with strong consumer demand.
