SportEX is not a business, it is a movement.

SportEX Asia held a two-day sports conference in the national capital earlier this month. This international conference had the support of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. Discussions were held around topics such as; sports related entities and investment in sports in India. We had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Raghvendra Madhav, Chairman, SportEX Asia. While terming the event as a ‘movement’, he believes sports sector has great potential which must not go unexplored.

Raghvendra Madhav, Chairman, SportEX Asia

Tell us about SportEx and its origins?

SportEx is a physical platform, but it is part of a movement. A movement to encourage sports in the country through the involvement of all the stakeholders, be it the government, the policy makers, the federations, the corporates, the HNIs (High Net Worth Individuals) who are investing in sports and advertising agencies. So, everybody gets together and figures out the best way of entering this sunrise sector so that more and more monies can go into sports and when more and more monies go into sports then the money trickles down. Once the money trickles down it goes to the grassroots level and a whole ecosystem gets generated which generates employment in the area of sports.

Apart from providing a platform to the investors do you also enable startups and SMEs to connect with corporates?

100%. That is the whole idea. This is the link point between those who have the money and those who have the ideas. So, this is a platform where they can meet, interact and think about what is on offer. At SportEX event, we have the investor roundtable with all the top VC funds and big investor names out there such as; Mr. Saurabh Srivastava, Former Chairman of NASSCOM, Mr. Ashok Trivedi, Ex-owner of Igate, etc.

How different is SportEX from other conferences held on sports?

In the west, sports are at a very mature level. Here, we have to start from scratch.For particular sports, there are conferences such as this. For instance, Soccerex is one of the biggest conferences in the world of soccer held in the UK every year. But our objective is a little different. Here it is about all the people who invest in sports, who make decisions about sports, getting together to do something serious about sports in the country.

What kind of emerging opportunities do you see in India in the short, medium and long-term?

Let’s look at it from the sports’ perspective. When Indian sportspersons start to do well, whether its PV Sindhu in Badminton or Sakshi Malik in Wrestling in the Olympics, a whole bunch of youngsters take to that sport. So, we need local sporting heroes. And, unless you have an initial surge of interest, that is where people have to take advantage and give them a process so that talented sportspersons are able to rise up. That is the challenge and one of the objectives of SportEX.

Recently, there has been severe criticism about Rio Olympics regarding the sportingassets includingthe infrastructure which is in disrepair. What are your expectations from the current dispensation in India?

Creation of infrastructure is as important as spending on individual sportspersons. The issue is the efficiency of usage of that. Stadiums are part of marketing money in a sense. How you use it after a sporting event is where the challenge is. The Central and State Governments and private sector put together, spend several thousand crore rupees on sports. The issue is how do you synergize it so that the efforts are being productive all around? That is why there has to be a constant conversation between all the stakeholders

so that the maximum productivity and efficiency of the money deployed can be had for the betterment of sports.

Shed some light on your future plans.

SportsEX is not a business. It is a movement. And in the future, we will be doing SportEX for schools and colleges, because sport has to be integrated into the curriculum so that it gets the importance that it deserves. We will be taking it to different regions and will be talking about different sports. We would also like to involve all the media and all the other stakeholders to be a part of this movement.

                                                                                   Interview by: Ahmed Swaleh