India’s youth sports story is often told through highlight reels and medals, but behind every moment on the podium lies years of training that are usually fragmented, unstructured, invisible – not to mention hard-won. Sourjyendu and Armaan are on a mission to change that by building India’s first integrated, tech-enabled, multi-sport platform that combines academies, leagues and performance technology for children – SFL (Sports For Life).
The opportunity
India’s kids’ sports and fitness industry is expected to reach USD 3–4 billion by 2030, driven by rising health awareness, increasing wallet spend by parents, and growing aspirations around sport as both a development and career pathway. Yet, grassroots training is still dominated by fragmented, single-sport academies that are often unbranded, coach-dependent and inconsistent in quality, curriculum, and safeguarding practices.
Across football, tennis, badminton, basketball, squash, table tennis and chess alone, there are tens of millions of youth players, but almost no pan-India, multi-sport platform that standardises coaching, tournaments, and tech across cities. At a category level, India’s sports industry is growing at nearly twice the pace of its GDP, but youth sports remains an “unorganised to organised” opportunity with very few scaled national players.
Global analogues like IMG Academy demonstrate the value that scaled, multi-sport youth platforms can create.
The offering
SFL is building a full stack, vertically integrated, D2C youth sports platform that spans academies and tournaments. What makes it even more compelling is a technology layer that digitises operations, engagement, and performance – parents can follow their kids’ progress and engagement easily. Currently, SFL offers seven sports including football and badminton, but soon, kids will be able to choose from multi-sport programs.
On top of the physical network of fields and venues sits a multi-module tech stack – academy management, tournament management, performance analytics and white-label SaaS – that powers discovery, enrolment, payments, attendance, progress tracking, livestreaming, stats, highlights and more. The result is a single, integrated experience where children train year-round, compete in best-in-class leagues and have their development journeys captured digitally for parents, coaches and, over time, scouts and universities.
This comprehensive technology layer also enables scalability, whether in the number of sports, centres, or cities.
The moat
SFL is uniquely positioned with twin moats: elite coaching, and an AI-first technology platform. On the coaching side, the company recruits globally certified coaches with national or state-level experience, offers equity-based incentives for long-term retention, exceptional in a market where coaching roles are often precarious and underpaid. SFl also backs these coaches with standardised curricula and coaching manuals co-created with national champions and international advisors such as the Icelandic football coach, Heimir Hallgrimsson.
On the tech side, the SFL app power high-utility features: academy discovery, trial booking, digital enrolment, attendance, performance dashboards, in-app communication, livestreaming, AI-powered highlights, match stats and gamified leaderboards. Early pilots already show strong adoption and deep engagement among parents.
The consumer
Parents describe SFL centres as organised, professional and personalised compared to traditional academies often perceived as “a bunch of individuals put together, not organisations”. Feedback highlights fixed coaches who track each child’s development, top-notch facilities, structured curricula, match reports, physios and age-led developmental planning rather than one-size-fits-all drills.
Parents particularly value the transparency and engagement enabled by tech – watching matches live or on replay, reviewing stats and match reports, and tracking attendance and progress – which turns weekend games into shared family experiences and measurable development journeys. For many families, sport is not just a hobby but part of holistic development and even a pathway to better college admissions, making SFL’s combination of performance, structure and documentation especially compelling.
The way ahead
SFL’s current footprint spans Mumbai and Pune across seven sports, with access to about 30 infrastructure providers where multiple sports can be played. For instance, the football network alone serves 800+ kids across 16 centres.
Upcoming expansions into Bengaluru and the NCR are expected to bring thousands more children into academies and tens of thousands into tournaments over the next year, with the sports portfolio expanding from seven to twelve, including cricket.
The Fireside perspective
At Fireside, we saw that SFL was at the intersection of several themes we’re excited about: kids’ health and development, the formalisation of a large, unorganised consumer category, and tech-enabled platform plays that can scale city by city. Youth sports in India is a large white space with strong tailwinds but very few scaled, branded players. SFL’s multi-sport, high-tech position offers a credible path to building the Cult.fit or OYO of youth sports.
SFL is ultimately a bet on the belief that structured, safe, high-quality sports should be as accessible and aspirational as academics for every child in India. By combining world-class coaching, a robust operating system and a deeply human focus on kids, parents and coaches, SFL aims to rewrite what grassroots sports can look like – one academy, one league, and one young athlete at a time.
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