KhelaHobe: Bringing the sports community of Bangladesh under one roof
KhelaHobe is a sports-community platform that enables you to engage in sports activities throughout your daily life. KhelaHobe allows you to find new teammates, plan games, connect with rivals, share accomplishments, and learn about sporting venues and activities through its platform.
Khela Hobe started its journey in 2021. In October 2021, KhelaHobe was selected as an ICT portfolio startup from the iDEA project. The co-founders, Syed Manjurul Hasan and Syed Nurul Hasan, started KhelaHobe from their eternal love for sports and wanted to bring the sports community of the country under one roof through the platform.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Having playing experience in first-division cricket, Syed Manjurul Hasan, CEO of KhelaHobe, noticed that many players from middle-class families could not get any career opportunities after retiring from cricket. As a result, they struggled a lot after retirement. That's where the Co-founders of KhelaHobe thought that they could build a platform where professional cricketers from the first and second divisions could utilise their strength to become trainers and nurture new players for the future.
According to Manjurul, KhelaHobe mainly works with the youth of the nation who are interested in sports. They have recently launched the digital scoreboard feature, i.e. the leaderboards for cricket and football. From June, they will start introducing scoreboard features for other sports as well, including badminton and basketball.
Previously, the live scoring documentation was done manually. But now, it can be digitally added through the platform. KhelaHobe users now can rank in the leaderboard through their performance. The leaderboard will be based on specific locations to allow a competitive environment for players from the same region to compete and play with each other.
Apart from the in-app activities, KhelaHobe also organises various sports events for its corporate partners. They also ensure club bookings as well as ground acquisition. For example, the Police Staff College is managed by KhelaHobe. It is also working towards establishing a panel for its Futsal Academy, which will allow trainers and panellists to have a stake in the sports ecosystem.
In essence, KhelaHobe is trying to encourage the growth of a budding sports community that caters to sports enthusiasts across the country.
Currently, KhelaHobe has over 10,000 users, including 4,000 repeat users who have availed its services. It also has 8 corporate partners and has organised sports tournaments for them. It regularly communicates information about various tournaments that take place in the vicinity of the users and also organises drop-in matches, where anyone can participate in football matches by paying a certain fee. Currently, KhelaHobe offers drop-in matches for football.
"While our operations are relatively Dhaka-centric, we are regularly talking to stakeholders from different regions in Chattogram, Sylhet, to build the sports ecosystem. Despite the high demand for the service, we need to tap further into the market to meet the needs of our users across the country. The sports market is still in its nascent stage in our country and we need to collaborate with relevant stakeholders to uphold the opportunity for the youth to come and play on the grounds." said Manjurul.
"Within the next few years, we are planning to create an atmosphere where everyone will be part of our sports community. Through our app, we want to create an engaged sports community where the players will be competing for their position in the leaderboards against their counterparts. When a thriving community is established, there will be a healthy environment for youngsters to engage with each other through sports. We want to build a platform that will enable local sports heroes to become professional athletes. That's the concept that we want to pull off in the coming future." he added.
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