Baru Walia
An avid footballer, Baru Walia used to play for his college, university and a few other social teams in Singapore and Australia in the past.
Now 34 years old, this staunch Manchester United fan always nursed an ambition to turn his passion into a business.
More than a year ago, he realised it was time to use his skills acquired from running his family business with his father to realise the dream.
“Asia’s grassroots-level football has not kept pace with technology despite a spurt in the cropping up of football courts/pitches/turfs in the region in the recent past,” he complains.
“The experience is still as same as ten years ago: bookings are still done via phone and payments via cash. Plus, the burden to organise the game always falls on the team captain or manager, and communication was basic among teams and players,” he says.
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“One day, I asked myself what I could do to change this. And Footsy is the culmination of these thoughts. A super app, Footsy aims to transform the football scene in the region and the way players and fans interact with the various elements within football,” he adds.
The startup, which has been in the works since 2018, was founded by the father-son duo of Baru and Jatin Walia.
A graduate in Banking & Finance from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Walia previously worked in the banking sector to join the family business. Jatin, himself a sports enthusiast, is a business veteran and has run businesses in Singapore and India.
Launched in January 2019 in Singapore, Footsy enables users to perform all the different functions of a football player and team on a single platform.
The app’s key functionalities include pitch booking, e-payments for venues or amongst teams, joining leagues, managing fixtures and attendances, tracking statistics even for amateurs, team chats or even finding players to fulfil games.
The platform also has content-related features such as news, videos, and fan clubs, which are supported by Footsy’s backend systems and are provided to venues, leagues, tournaments and clubs.
The market opportunity
In Singapore alone, there are over 300 pitches (200 ’11-a-side’ and over 100 Futsal pitches), which is a huge number for a small island nation. In bigger countries such as Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia, the numbers are in the thousands, which bodes well for the startup.
“It’s a mammoth market, as football is the biggest sport in the world,” Walia says. “We at Footsy have on-boarded at least 20 pitches in Singapore within their first year and continue to add more. Although the COVID-19 situation has halted the process with businesses shutting down, we hope to bounce back once things normalise.”
A free-to-use app, Footsy primarily earns money through subscriptions (it provides backend systems to the different entities in the industry, commissions from pitch bookings, and advertising.
Footsy also has plans to expand the revenue streams by adding new features such as e-commerce and e-sports in the future.
With an estimated market size of over SGD80 million (US$58 million) per annum, the opportunity in Singapore is huge, as the country constantly upgrades its processes through new and better digital systems. The local market, however, is a drop in the ocean compared to the other markets in the region.
Other markets such as Australia and India are also massive opportunities where football is coming up fast and quick.
“We have provided language options for Malaysia and Indonesia and will roll out language options for other countries down the road. We customise the app for each country to meet their local demographics and football DNA,” he discloses.
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The challenges are aplenty, admits Walia. Building an ecosystem of this scale in such a short time and with the limited resources at hand has been challenging. COVID-19 has also been a hurdle as it forced many a country to close down entertainment and sports.
“However, as countries slowly emerge out of the lockdown and things return to normal, we pivoted to add on more ‘virtual football’ features to keep our users engaged,” Walia shares.
At present, Footsy has a team of six employees on its payroll. The startup also has set up smaller team in Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia to manage local expansion in respective markets. India expansion is also on the anvil.
Walia says that as the company grows and expands regionally, it will require funding to achieve its plans.
“We are looking to raise SGD500,000 (~US$360,000) in funding, which will be used for expanding our team further that will aid in regional expansion and further development of the Footsy ecosystem,” he signs off.
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Image Credit: Footsy
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