Playo Raises USD 500K As A Part Of Its Ongoing Pre-Series A Round From Ah! Ventures

SportsTech Startup Playo has raised USD 500K as a part of its ongoing Pre-Series A round from ah! Ventures High Tables Platform and other eminent angel investors. This is ah! Ventures’ 18th investment in 2021 and 3 more investments will be announced shortly. This takes ah! Ventures’ total investment portfolio to INR 224 CR (~30 MN USD) with 84 investments in 67 startups and 11 exits till date (and 2 more exits in process). 

Headquartered in India, Playo is a one-stop platform for sports enthusiasts focusing on building micro-communities and enabling sports/fitness related services targeting urban adult users. With a business model focusing on 3 Cs- Community, Content & Commerce and 1.5 Mn users, Playo is today the largest platform for amateur sports globally and among the top 500 downloaded apps globally on Play Store in the Health & Fitness category. Playo was awarded the Best of 2018 Apps by Google and has also gained accolades at the Burda FitTech Summit, Germany and World Football Summit, Malaysia. 

Currently operational in India, UAE & Qatar with ongoing pilots in the UK & Australia, Playo is on track towards its mission of creating a unique global SportsTech platform. Playo has enabled 3 Mn relationships amongst users and power 150K monthly sports activities. With a pre-Covid annualised run rate of $8 Mn in sales, Playo had achieved cash-flow breakeven before being impacted by COVID. 

“Our vision is to build a global SportsTech platform fostering communities through sports and we are grateful to our angel investors who have whole-heartedely backed our novel quest.”, said Gauravjeet Singh, Founder & CEO of Playo. “Sports provides an incomparable opportunity to connect people while also making them fitter in a more engaged way. Playo’s value proposition has resonated with users, not just in Indian metros but also in Tier 2/3 towns and International markets. More than 10% of our active users are outside India and during the course of the pandemic we have seen our presence swell to 35+ cities across India. What has been most encouraging to see, is users come back with renewed vigor to sports post lifting of lockdowns – we witnessed a strong bounce-back post the first lockdown with a ~70% recovery vs pre-COVID levels, which underlines people’s strong desire to play, socialize and get fit.” 

Amit Kumar, Senior Partner at ah! Ventures said, “Sports has traditionally been an incredible, unifying forum for communities to come together however with time we have seen people stop playing or people getting stuck with finding players to play the game with or with questions like where to play and how to play. Playo is perfectly addressing all these questions with it’s 3Cs model coupled with the amazing tech platform it has built. We are extremely bullish about SportsTech and I think Playo’s ability to capture the market opportunity and the efficiency with which the founding team has scaled the business so far, made the process of investment decision a lot easier. We are delighted to be a part of their exciting journey.”