 "KOOH Sports raises follow-on round fund of $2.2mn")
Existing investors such as HDFC, Faering Capital, Elevate Sports and the founders have participated in this round. The fresh funds will be used to pursue international markets expansion, taking new product innovations to market and also to enhance working capital to meet high growth needs.
KOOH Sports is currently operating in 180 schools across 50 cities, with 80 multi-sport academies in 25 cities having a staff strength of about 400 people. This is expected to grow in the next 6-9 months to about 200-220 schools, 100 academies supported by 500-plus people.
With the new fund raise; KOOH Sports also wants to reinforce the senior management team. Recently the company has inducted John Gloster (ex-physiotherapist of Indian Cricket Team and Rajasthan Royals and is also a leading Health and Fitness expert) in a full-time capacity as The Chief Quality Officer and Advisor to the Board of KOOH Sports. Similarly, they are looking to broaden the senior management team with operational and technical capabilities.
Chirag Patel, CEO, KOOH Sports, said "As we are scaling up, we need to offer better set of holistic sports education services and sports training solutions that underpins the KOOH Sports platform."
He also added that for the India platform they need two things. First, to have greater access to highly skilled and elite level sports coaches and technical staff, especially in sports like swimming, football and tennis.
"Second, is to gain greater access to world-class facilities and programmes in developed markets like UK, Australia and Dubai in a way that is cost effective from an Indian market perspective. We are currently evaluating to buy one or more assets from a carefully curated list of assets in geographies like UK, Australia and Middle East and are also pursing international partnerships particularly in UK and Australia. Armed with new funding our ability to execute and quickly reinforce the India platform becomes that much easier," said Patel.
Over the years, the company has trained over 400 sports coaches and every sports coach and physical education teacher that they hire goes through a internal training programme called KITES (KOOH Sports Institute of Training and Excellence for Sports Skills). The company has got an accreditation from National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to set up a vocational training institute across the country.
Susir Kumar, Founder, KOOH Sports, said, "Our existing shareholders have continued to show faith in the founders, the management team and the model and they continue to be excited with the new opportunities that we are presenting. There is a possibility that we may raise significant capital next year to further scale up through international expansion, add new sports specific capabilities and reinforce the product portfolio. If we have to transform sports outcomes then KOOH Sports is the right engine to drive the health and fitness outcomes first for our children. Training coaches and facilitating employment by introducing innovative solutions to cater to the demand gap, we are addressing the fundamental issues of scaling up and are confident of our growth strategy in the Indian and international market."