Adventure sports centre may come up in Hyd

Bored of movies, musical nites and fashions shows that happen once in while, and want to try out something adventurous? Well, your wait is not too long.

XtremeZone Sports and Services Private Limited, a Bangalore-based adventure sports management outfit, is all set to give Hyderabadis an adrenaline-pumping experience.

The Rs 4-crore company, which claims to be the single-largest adventure sports company in the country, is planning to set up an adventure sports centre in Hyderabad at an investment of around Rs 46 lakh.

"We are currently scouting for around 10 acres of land abutting the Nagarjuna Sagar road, and will be setting up an adventure sports centre at an investment of Rs 46 lakh shortly," Praveen Krishnaiah, chief executive officer of XtremeZone, told Business Standard.

"A recent study revealed that Hyderabadis spend 10.4 per cent of their income on gifts and lifestyle, which is an emerging spend category. Moreover, XtremeZone aims at offering alternative recreation using adventure sports as a medium. The reason we chose to tread this path is that all adventure sports require minimal or no skill sets unlike cricket, football and other indoor and outdoor games," he said.

The proposed centre would offer adventure sports like bungee jumping, reverse bungee (catapulting), rocketman, painball, rock climbing, camping, kayaking and rafting, targeting at the age group of between 17 and 34.

And the prices? "Quite affordable. A bungee jump costs you around Rs 500 and a weekend camping programme Rs 4,000," Krishnaiah said. "We have so far worked on a B2B model, and would now operate on a B2C basis, in Hyderabad to start with," he said.

The company, that currently has footprint in Delhi, Mumbai, Mysore, Bangalore and Chennai, is also planning to have its presence in all the metros in the next 12 months.

"To achieve this, we are planning to invest around Rs 4.5 crore. We are also looking at raising $2 million venture capital fund and are currently in talks with a few VCs. But, our immediate goal is to become a Rs 100-crore company in the next three years," he said.

XtremeZone's clientele base include Pepsi Foods, Standard Chartered, Nokia, Infosys, HLL, Arvind Brands, Emid Technologies and Spice Telecom.