Playerify is a sports platform that will help sports people to discover sports in a locality and play more. The inspiration for something like this came from the unorganized and fragmented sports eco system and the Playerify team aims at joining the dots in sports. They strongly believe that the next wave of transformation in sports can be brought about by connected and organized local sports ecosystem.
Playerify started its journey with a cricket platform in December 2012 and during the course of execution moved onto generic sports platform. They were incubated and seed funded by The Morpheus.
How does Playerify work
The team is looking to help sports people solve some problems that they often face, like
1) “I wish I could tell the world that I am sports player , my sports skills and achievements.”
2) Difficult to know other players in locality or discover new players to play.
3) Difficult to know venues around to play and who is available to play.
4) “How am I playing ?” Player’s data/stats on game.
5) What sports events are happening around?
Through Playerify people can publish sports persona , discover other players and venues in Bangalore. Players can invite other players to play and engage in real sports.
Playerify team
Playerify was developed by Prashant and Chetan. Both of them have been avid sports players representing various sports and teams , organizing and managing at times. The common passion of sports and improvising sports through technology is what brought them together.
Prashant and Chetan- Team Playerify
Prashant holds ExMBA from IIM -C and earlier worked in Digital TV space with NDS Pay TV Technology [ now Cisco ] , Pace Microtechnology [ earlier Philips STB] , Texas Instruments before this.
Chetan in earlier corporate life worked in EnterpriseDB , HP , Oracle and is an open source addict. He handles all technology aspects of this venture.
Journey so far
Playerify did early beta in Sept – 2013 and so far they have more than 850 sports players onboard. They have hosted 4 major leagues , most recent one being the commonfloor apartment cricket league with 40 teams. Their target market are the amateur and casual sports players.
More about Playerify
– Playerify helps users Look for place to play through a simple map search built in which people can filter based on their location/sports preference.
– They cover following sports in first phase : Cricket , Football , Badminton , Squash , Tennis , Table Tennis , Basketball, Volleyball. They are also planning to cover more sports in the near future.
– The greatest challenge for the team has been user acquisition.
– They plan on earning profits by hosting sports events on the platform.
– Since playerify is public platform , they do not certify user inputs/statistics themselves unless it is hosted or managed by the team. As players can update scores , this needs to be approved by opponents and that would put barrier on false data inputs.
Future plans
The Playerify team plans to develop features that are critical for sports players engagement on playerify. Currently they are live in bangalore and are planning to expanding to other cities.
Playerify is aimed at a global platform and they have plans to expand beyond India on their cards.The team plans to add scores / stats further to feedback players about game in near future.
TTP’s Take
Playerify is an innovative concept and a gift to all the players who strive to move out of their locality and show their talent. Playerify is a platform which gives amateurs and casual players an opportunity to fulfil their dream. We wish team Playerify a very good luck!
