Revolutionising grassroots cricket: Abhishek Desai on the story of CricHeroes

Since its inception, CricHeroes has been revolutionising grassroots cricket in India by introducing digital scoring and analytics In this interaction with Adgully, Abhishek Desai, Founder, CricHeroes, speaks about the platform’s journey, its impact on the grassroots cricket ecosystem, and the new products and features that CricHeroes is introducing to further enhance the cricketing experience for its users. Excerpts:

How has the journey of CricHeroes been since its founding? Throw some light on the initial days, funding, challenges, etc.? How did you overcome the challenges?

The idea of CricHeroes was started to solve our own problems as cricketers. Just like millions of cricketers in India and around the world I also play regularly on weekends with my friends. If you can relate, after every cricket game there is always a discussion and these discussions happen without any data. I thought why don't we at least start digitally scoring our matches so that when we do such discussions next time at least we have some data to look up to. So, I tried my hands on a couple of apps which were already there in the market but I was not happy with any of them because both of them had poor user experience according to me and they both were primarily designed for tournament organizers or cricket clubs or cricket associations. They were used by trained scorers and not by normal cricketers like myself. So, that’s when the idea of building CricHeroes started.

I also surveyed in and around Ahmedabad. I went to a few grounds and talked to a few scorers over there and realized that 60-70% of the matches are being scored on paper-based score sheets but nothing else is happening on top of that data. So that's when I realized that if I can scale it up and build a product which a normal cricketer can use to support their matches and if the scale up can be done to a certain level there is definitely a business. I created a business plan around that particular idea and presented it in front of my friends and family and I could raise a small seed fund from them and that's how CricHeroes started.

How do you unearth grassroots cricket talent? How does it work?

Very early in our journey we approached cricket associations to start using CricHeroes for officially scoring their local domestic matches which were scored on paper-based score sheets before. Some of the associations were very progressive and appreciated the idea. When they started using the CricHeroes app, it helped them to consolidate all the data in their system. They got access to all the data in one place and which was in real time, which was not the case before. They were in a much better position to make decisions around data, to select players, to organize tournaments, to share scores amongst the officials, players, etc.

I wouldn’t say we have influenced their decisions to select a particular player over somebody else, but I'm pretty sure that the process of selection has become transparent because of CricHeroes. This is one advantage which CricHeroes has brought into the grassroots cricket ecosystem specifically for players who are interested in taking up cricket as a career. For players who do not play the game as a career but still with passion, we have tried to recognize them for every little achievement of theirs which is worth recognizing. This will give them a solid reason to continue playing and keep improving their game by just collecting the data in an organized manner and by simply recognizing their effort on the ground.

We believe that we have made a huge difference to the grassroots cricket ecosystem. Players have become more aware about their stats, where they stand as cricketers and where they can improve. They have also become more competitive because of the leader boards which we have on our application. We have leaderboards recognising people starting from their city, state, tournaments and teams. Such gamifications in the app continuously keep pushing the players to do better, making us believe that we have made a small difference in the overall quality of the game.

What are the new products and features of CricHeroes?

The latest product in the pipeline is CH Cam, which is a camera that will help users to livestream matches in high quality and at an affordable price.

The advanced analytics module called CricInsights, which helps the players understand their game better in order to become better, is a unique feature of CricHeroes. They can understand and analyse the data in a much more visual and user-friendly way and become better cricketers. Then we brought in live streaming in the hands of a normal cricket player by using just a mobile phone and a good data network. You can live stream your match along with scoring the match. The recent innovation brought in the lines of live streaming we have introduced something called Highlights which processes the live streaming video and creates a highlight package for that particular match and also the particular innings which makes it easier for the user to see the highlights rather than the whole match.

Shots is an extension of our video offering. We are focusing a lot on video innovations recently. Everything starts with live streaming a match. Shots are the same as Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts but only for the cricketers. Shots on CricHeroes are curated automatically. We select some good matches which have been live streamed on CricHeroes and we identify certain shots from that match which we can edit to a 10-15 seconds video, and put those videos in a reel format on our app. This is from the perspective of recognizing cricketers who have had good moments in a match and engaging the audience. This is mainly helpful for cricketers who are playing at amateur level.

What are the growth, expansion and funding plans in the near and long-term future?

The revenue generated for the current year until now is Rs 3.5 crore. The user base of CricHeroes is expected to be 30 million in FY2023. The expected revenue generation for FY2023 is Rs 8-10 crore and we have an expected revenue generation of Rs 20 crore in FY 2024. We have more than 25,000 paid subscribers on the platform and around 2,000 matches are streamed live on CricHeroes.

In 2017 we got an angel investment of $89.9K from Nilaj J Patel and followed it up with $155K from other angel investors in 2018. In 2021, we got an investment of $218K from Chanakya Gupta, Sanjay Shukla and others. The latest investment in CricHeroes is done by Games 24x7 to an amount of $989K.

What are the upcoming plans? Are you planning to tie up with more cricket boards?

CricHeroes today is the official scoring partner to more than 200 state associations and international cricket boards. Major BCCI affiliated state associations like Cricket Association of Bengal, Baroda Cricket Association, Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, etc., along with ICC Members like Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Canada and more are using the platform.

We have clients like Cricket Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, who are test playing nations. At the same time, we have ICC affiliated members from Latin America, Africa and Europe who are using CricHeroes. It has been a focus of the company to associate with such countries. Talks are also ongoing to tie up with more cricket boards in the near future.

Where do you see CricHeroes two years from now?

In terms of market share, the share of CricHeroes in grassroots cricket is more than 90%. There is still a huge space to expand and grow. We are at a 16 million user base in which 90% are from India. The market is more than 100 million and ICC estimates the market to be more than 300 million. Therefore there is still a huge room to grow for us in this particular market.

The big idea is to connect every stakeholder (businesses and professionals) of cricket with each other and capture all transactions happening on the network. Our main focus is to be a platform for millions of grassroots cricketers to showcase their talent, get recognition for their achievements, and become better cricketers. Our vision is to focus on our objective of supporting grassroots talents and keep providing a platform for them so that the community will grow helping each other.

We want to bridge the gap between grassroots-level cricketers and technology so that it is accessible to everyone.