This article has been contributed by Abhinav Sinha – Founder of SportsSkill.
India’s SportsTech moment must be seen as part of the country’s wider digital transformation. If we want to improve results at the international level, we have to spot athletes early at the grassroots and give them proper guidance from the very beginning. Without technology, the system has clear limitations — and many gifted youngsters never even get started because access is out of reach.
In the last decade, India has shown how digital can unlock opportunity. Affordable smartphones, low data costs, and public digital infrastructure have changed how people use banking, healthcare, and trade. Sport is now tapping into the same ecosystem.
Take UPI, which has made small, seamless payments routine — whether for booking grounds, paying for training sessions, or buying tickets. Or Aadhaar-linked identities, which make athlete registration and verification quick and simple. Built on this digital backbone, SportsTech can finally give millions of kids the chance to participate, not just watch.
The opportunity for India is clear: use technology not only to entertain fans, but to empower the next generation of players.
Remote monitoring by coaches and scouts is made possible by cloud-based platforms. Effectively, sportstech is expanding not only because India is a sports-loving nation, but because digital rails that serve the broader economy now reach out to recreational and professional sporting activity. This integration makes India’s path unique in contrast to other economies, where sports tech has developed mainly as an extension of entertainment or fitness.
Participation as the Prime Driver
Worldwide, most investment in sports tech has gone into deepening athletic performance. Unfortunately, in India, the focus has been on fan experiences –streaming, betting, fantasy leagues, and interactive content—with fantasy sports platforms holding the lion’s share of market valuations.
However, India’s larger opportunity lies in broadening participation. Our sports pyramid has been getting smaller for a long time. There is a small elite at the top and a thin middle tier below. This equation is starting to get back in balance thanks to technology. Booking ground, mobile fitness monitors, and distance coaching software online makes it easy for anyone to take part in organised activities in both huge cities and small communities. SportsTech can help millions of people go from being passive viewers to active players by making it easier and cheaper to get involved. This transformation has a huge impact on the health of the community, the health of the public, and the search for new talent. It indicates that participation, not watching, is the actual frontier for Indian sports.
Scouting and Talent Pipelines
A key challenge for Indian sport has been uneven talent discovery. A great number of athletes from small-town areas never reach the attention of federations or professional leagues until it is too late. Sportstech gives you the tools you need to fill this gap. Federations can find talented players faster and more easily with apps that track performance, digital portfolios, and cloud-based databases for scouting. It is not merely an issue of equity. A data-driven talent pipeline also enhances the global competitiveness of domestic leagues and national teams. Nations that have invested in such systems, like Australia or the UK, have achieved long-term gains in Olympic and professional achievement. For India, embedding technology in scouting can determine if the growth of interest in non-cricket sports manifests as resilient international performance.
Muskaan Kapoor
Capital Movements and Symmetries
There has been a lot of investment in India’s sports IT market, but it hasn’t been even. Fantasy and fan-engagement applications pull the bulk of the cash, given their near-term monetisation potential. Ventures based on performance analytics, grassroots development, or coaching help struggle more to scale. This predilection towards gaming and fantasy platforms implies that funding can migrate disproportionately towards speculative or entertainment-based activities while the long-term enablers of India’s athletic ecosystem are neglected. For a sustainable future, there needs to be a more equitable investment policy. Policy incentives, impact-focused funding, and engagement with federations can channel resources toward training technology, infrastructure digitisation and athlete welfare. Without rebalancing in this way, the industry threatens to repeat the same structural problems that have traditionally restricted Indian sport.
Regulation and Credibility
The regulatory landscape will greatly influence the credibility of sportstech in India. Fantasy sports sites, for example, remain in a grey area in many states, raising questions regarding gambling and consumer protection. Athlete tracking and fan analytics privacy is another emerging issue. Clear, consistent frameworks are needed to ensure that innovation is not compromised by reputational risks. Across the world, sportstech has become legitimate, where regulators have made it clear, balancing consumer protection with innovation. India will require the same approach, especially with increasing cross-border investments and local companies looking for international partnerships. Transparency will foster good innovation and reassure investors and users.
Convergence with Health and Education
Sportstech in India’s long-term potential is its convergence with the neighbouring sectors. Health technology is a natural space for convergence. Tracking fitness, preventing injury, planning nutrition, and rehabilitating can all be provided by digital platforms, with sport being the gateway. This convergence opens the consumer base outside professional athletes or sports fans to encompass common citizens in pursuit of wellness. You could also look into schooling. Schools typically have problems setting up organised physical activities since they don’t have enough coaches or facilities. Sportstech can fill those gaps through digital means, providing remote coaching, performance measurement and organised curricula. If well-integrated, sportstech can stand not only as an entertainment or elite sport industry, but as a health and education contributor to the nation.
Rural Access and Inclusivity
The potential of sports tech will remain untapped until it reaches beyond urban areas. Rural India is home to most of the nation’s youth but lacks access to facilities, equipment and coaching. Low-cost wearables, vernacular-language apps, and AI-based skill screening can facilitate bridging the gap. Collaborations between state governments, NGOs, and private companies could allow rural youth to access the same technological platforms currently available in the cities.
Inclusivity will also need to cut across gender. Women athletes in India still have disproportionate access barriers to coaching and competition. To fix these differences, sports tech platforms that give women safe places to play, mentors, and opportunities to be seen can help. How well the sector deals with these fundamental inequalities will partly determine its credibility.
The Global Window
India’s sportstech narrative is not exclusively domestic change. As a technology hub with a huge youth demographic, India can export solutions to the world. Start-ups developing AI-driven performance tools, affordable analytics, or repeatable fan-engagement platforms may discover markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where the same structural issues are present. Success in these markets would confirm India’s status as not only a consumer of international sport but also a sportstech innovation producer.
Conclusion
The evolution of sportstech in India is a significant turning point for the interaction between sport, society, and technology. What started off as a trend of fantasy sites and streaming services is now going into training, scouting, infrastructure and wellness. The possibilities are high, but so are the challenges. For the industry to reach its potential, three things have to come together: matching flows of investment that provide long-term development in tandem with commercial platforms; regulatory certainty that gains trust and safeguards consumers; and its focus on inclusivity, providing access across regions, genders, and socio-economic classes. On these terms, Sportstech could become the keystone of India’s sporting revolution and meaningfully add to the country’s digital economy.
Kinnary Nensee
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