Get out and play

ootball fanatic Viraj Velinker was finding it increasingly difficult to coordinate with friends for their regular football match. “With multiple chat platforms, scrolling down over a dozen messages on a WhatsApp group and figuring out who will be there and who will be not, was tedious,” he says. That’s when Velinker along with Payal Lohia and Kunal Dalal decided to design PlaySports, an app for fitness freaks and sports lovers. “Often, we were unable to get enough players for a match or at times, a ground to play. Countless hours of coordinating between friends, ground booking staff and chat groups made us realise that an app would serve the purpose,” adds Velinkar.

PlaySports is designed to address the need of fitness freaks and simplify coordination when amateur players want to get together to play a sport. Once you join the PlaySports community, you can form a team of your own with friends interested in sports including cricket, football, basketball, tennis, yoga and billiards. “You can start a game at any location, simply by dropping a pin on MapView. If your team falls short of players, enable scout mode to find new players. You will never have to cancel another game because you are short of participants,” says Velinkar.

The app is enabled with live chat functionality and in Quickplay mode, one can view the game being played or scheduled in your vicinity. One needn’t be a part of an existing team to sign up for a game. You can choose your preferred game and join instantly. The filters allow you to select your favoured location and define your available time slots, besides receiving notifications on new games.

It is not only players but ground-owners who could end up using the app. "For ground owners, the backend does away with hassles such as overlapping bookings, payment defaults, empty slots and so on. PlaySports will be able to provide lesser-used slots at discounts and even fill up cancelled bookings," adds Velinkar. With eight employees on the payroll, the start-up, which bootstrapped with ₹20 lakh, is looking for seed funding. It plans to generate revenue from ground bookings, user-created events and advertising.