India as a country has spurned many an entrepreneurs. Saumil Mazumbdar is
one of them. He is the CEO of the self-founded EduSports. He came to the
limelight after he won the Pioneering Spirit: Season 2, a campaign to
promote entrepreneurs organized by Lufthansa. This weekend, lets salute
this person; more in the appended mail.
Like every other IITian, Saumil Majumdar dreamt of being his own boss
someday. But, when he did turn entrepreneur, his choice of business had
nothing to do with his engineering background; Majumdar is the Managing
Director of Sportz Village, a sports venture for children. “I’ve always
been passionate about sports and today it keeps the home fires burning,”
jokes the IIT Bombay alumnus. Nevertheless, sports as a business venture
wasn’t something Majumdar had planned—it happened quite by accident. The
idea dates back to a conversation he had with a friend several years
earlier on why his children preferred television to sports. “This guy was
talking about the absence of playing spaces for his children. He said his
apartment block had a tennis court and a gym but nothing for children,”
recalls Majumdar. A quick tour of Bangalore’s residential buildings
followed and he found that the story was the same everywhere. School sports
were no fun either. According to Majumdar, it is between the ages of five
and 10 (kindergarten to class V) that a child learns crucial skills like
hand-eye co-ordination, locomotion and body movement. “If a child does not
pick up these skills at the right age, it’s unlikely he will develop an
interest in sports later,” he says.
That prompted Majumdar and two like-minded friends—Jayashankar B and
Jitendra Joshi—to set up Sportz Village, with funds raised from family and
friends. The concept was simple: they would create a place where children
could learn any sport. California-based sports psychologist George Selleck
was brought in to oversee the programme and develop training modules for
coaches. Selleck has been named high school coach of the year for several
years in a row by the Los Angeles Times.
“Our vision was to change the way parents and children looked at sports,”
says Majumdar. The first such Sportz Village came up in HSR Layout, a
suburb of Bangalore, on government land taken on a long-term lease. The
response was good. Over 100 members signed on in the first month. Within a
year, Sportz Village had more than 500 members. Activities included simple
physical activities like throwing a ball and playing with hoopla rings to
more formal games like basketball, cricket, badminton and football. It’s
open to children from the age of five onwards and the monthly fee ranges
from Rs 300-450.
Gaining Size
But the company hit a roadblock when the promoters wanted to scale up
operations. Says Majumdar: “Just getting hold of land to set up more Sportz
Villages proved a herculean task.” So, instead of setting up their own
infrastructure, they decided to piggyback on existing sports facilities
available in schools. There was an added benefit; parents were reassured as
the children were in a safe and familiar environment. This ‘school format’
was spun off as a separate company, called EduSports, in January 2009.
EduSports is a sports management services company. Its objective mirrors
that of Sportz Village: to introduce children to sports. The only
difference is the format, which involves working with schools. “Our
objective is to enable a child to perform in a physical activity or sport
in such a way that he gets better at it over time just like he does at math
or science,” says Majumdar.
Sportz Village went on to explore new revenue streams like hosting sporting
events, sports ticketing and providing sports consulting services to
corporate clients. All these efforts are paying off.
Children from kindergarten to class IV are a neglected lot as PT teachers
are usually not trained to deal with them. “We train our people to work
with small children,” says Majumdar. It’s not just about making sports fun,
but also about ensuring that each of the students is equally interested.
Once EduSports signs on a school as a client—payment is either per student
or a lumpsum—it designs a customised curriculum and plans daily lessons. It
also assigns a trained employee to manage the programme. This trainer works
with the children during their games period by familiarising them with the
basics of sports, such as how to throw a ball, how to catch it, the
technique to follow while running, and so on. The children are then
introduced to some sport. Their progress is monitored and a report card is
generated every quarter. “Designing a programme is one thing, but its
success ultimately depends on how you implement it,” says Majumdar.
The company works with 30,000 children in 30 schools. The first client was
TVS School in Madurai. The school’s management conducted a fitness survey
in 2008 and found the statistics alarming enough to lay more emphasis on
sports and physical education. They had heard about Majumdar’s attempts at
Sportz Village and contacted him. The rest, as they say, is history.
Recently, Lata Srivastav, Principal of Zee School in Bangalore’s eastern
suburb of Whitefield, signed a three-year contract with EduSports. And she
is happy with the results. “We want to make physical education an extension
of our classroom teaching. This will ensure that the subject gets treated
on par with the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic),” says
Srivastav.
Finding Their Feet
Parents, too, are pleased with the outcome. Rekha Ravindhiran, mother of
Jeya Shwetha, a student of class III at TVS Matric Higher Secondary School
in Madurai, says her daughter had a good academic record but was left out
of physical training activities because of her awkward gait. “She hated PT
classes, but over the last three months I have noticed a big change.
Recently, she took part in the school’s sports day and was thrilled to
bits.”
EduSports’ clients are not drawn from elite schools in metros, but from
Tier II and III cities like Amritsar, Ludhiana, Lucknow, Baroda, Mangalore
and Madurai. “Our lowest-fee school is one that charges Rs 285 per month as
tuition fee!” says Majumdar. He cites the example of a school that could
not pay for his services. The principal saw enough merit in the concept to
invite parents for a one-day workshop. Impressed by what they saw, the
parents agreed to cough up the extra amount on a trial basis. It’s been a
year and the extra payment continues. Being a services company, the initial
investment required to get EduSports off the ground was small—Majumdar
refuses to say just how small. He also refuses to share revenue figures but
says the company will break-even by the year-end.
There are no immediate funding plans. For now, Majumdar and his partner,
Meer Waqiruddin Khaleeq, are eager to tap a much larger audience. Their
game-plan is to reach out to more schools and ultimately work with
thousands of children. It’s a daunting task for a fledgling company, but as
athletes, Majumdar and Khaleeq are trained to keep trying until they
succeed.
Like I always say, brickbats and bouquets welcome!
-Sukhi
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