The 2017 women's World Cup in England was the turning point with 180 million watching the game out of which 156 million were from India, says Lahoti.
Breaking Boundaries, which runs the womenscriczone.com, has just raised an undisclosed amount in its seed round from angel investors, including international cricketer Kedhar Jadhav. This round was led by Pune-based Hodek Ventures. The round also saw participation from individual angel investors Pravin Bhalerao, former ED at IIFL Wealth, Chitale Bandhu Mithaiwale’s Indraneel Chitale and Hyderabad-based Reena Lahoti, director at Amp and Ohm.
The Indian women’s cricket team may not have brought the World Cup home but their performance in the last few years has been good enough to generate interest and a fan following. An outcome of this success is a Pune-based start-up, Breaking Boundaries, creating Women’s CricZone, a platform dedicated to women’s cricket. Women’s cricket IPL would have provided the right fuel for a take-off but now that will have to wait. However, that has not dimmed the enthusiasm of the start-up as it seeks to become a one stop destination for everything on women’s cricket anywhere in the world.
There are 62 countries across the globe playing women’s cricket with teams even in Brazil and Argentina, says Yash Lahoti, founder of Breaking Boundaries. But the attention they get is not fair and equitable, he points out. If the men are playing cricket and there is a women’s match, there is no prize for guessing which team hogs all the attention, he states.
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Lahoti watched a women’s cricket World Cup match between England and New Zealand in 2009 and had been following them since then but could never find enough on any medium so he decided on focus on this niche to promote women’s cricket through this platform. Lahoti says they keep track of each and every cricket match women play anywhere in the world. They have five lakh users of the website and during the recent World Cup, they saw seven million impressions. Around 80% of their market comes from in India, followed by UK and Australia. The whole idea was to give the women the due credit and attention, he says, and is sure there is no platform like theirs anywhere in the world.
The 2017 women’s World Cup in England was the turning point with 180 million watching the game out of which 156 million were from India, says Lahoti. The Indian team ended as runners-up but that was enough for Lahoti to realise that this would grow exponentially in future and he started this venture in 2018. Since then, he has been building a team, establishing their office, launching a bi-annual print as well as an e-magazine devoted to women’s cricket. Highlighting women cricketers and their achievements, they also organised the first of its kind awards for women players. Advertising is the main source of revenue and the current break on all kind of live sports has not been a dampener as Lahoti believes things will come back on track. A fresh round of funding has helped.
Breaking Boundaries, which runs the womenscriczone.com, has just raised an undisclosed amount in its seed round from angel investors, including international cricketer Kedhar Jadhav. This round was led by Pune-based Hodek Ventures. The round also saw participation from individual angel investors Pravin Bhalerao, former ED at IIFL Wealth, Chitale Bandhu Mithaiwale’s Indraneel Chitale and Hyderabad-based Reena Lahoti, director at Amp and Ohm. The company had earlier raised a pre-seed round from angel investor and criminal lawyer Chinmay Bhosale and Reena Lahoti. Jadhav says women’s cricket needs all the support it can get and this is playing a vital role in popularising the sport and highlighting the player’s achievements. For Jadhav it was also a way of giving back to the sport that has been his life. According to Abhijit Khanvilkar, director, Hodek Ventures , women’s cricket was on an upward trend of exponential growth both in the country and the next decade will certainly see it rise further. LegaLogic Consulting, a full-service law firm based in Pune, advised Women’s CricZone on structuring, due diligence, negotiation and finalisation of the deal.
Breaking Boundaries also got capital and incubation support from Pune-based Posiview Ventures, an early stage investment accelerator arm of an investment banking firm, Posiview Consulting and promoted by Prajakta Shetye-Deo, Vinit Deo and Kailash Mundada.
Lahoti says the ICC and BCCI have put in a lot of money and resources to promote women’s cricket and people too are responding to women’s cricket and though only 10% of those who follow men’s cricket follow women’s cricket but this will keep growing and a women’s IPL will be the ultimate game changer.our business’ personality shine through. Choose a great image to feature in your post or add a video for extra engagement. Are you ready to get started? Simply create a new post now.
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