An Interview with Sports Entrepreneurs from IISM- Team Sports Doyen

Since 11 years, IISM through persistent efforts has encouraged students to take up entrepreneurial tasks and enhance their entrepreneurship skills. Some of the IISM students have established their own venture called the Sports Doyen. The Sports Doyen is a sports media organization where students provide a platform for fans and experts to voice their opinions, either through live shows on YouTube and Facebook or through their website.

Here’s a written Interview with team Sports Doyen:

1. What makes you draw towards sports?

Watching the nation react to the 2011 World Cup win made me envy that kind of celebration. Despite sports as a concept being volatile on occasions, we know it can spark a moment of brilliance every now and then, one that can make our day, week or a month sometimes. 2011 WC, the Gabba win recently being two of those.

2. How did studying Sports Management come into picture?

Being a sports writer myself, I wanted to groom myself from being an amateur to a professional in the sports media field. This is when I came across sports management courses, and shortly after that, I learnt about IISM.

3. Tell us about your learnings at IISM

IISM offers the most passionate environments for a student to learn. My experience of being in the college helped me nurture my writing skills, also developing my inter-personal skills which can help me grow in the field further.

4. Tell us about your venture- The Sports Doyen.

The Sports Doyen – Or TSD as we call it, is a sports media organization where we provide a platform for fans and experts to voice their opinions, either through our live shows on YouTube and Facebook or through our website.

5. What is the idea behind your venture?

TSD was formed a bunch of sports fanatics, and we wanted to give ourselves a platform where our opinions about the sport can garner limelight. During the pandemic, we noticed that a lot of media organizations were struggling to hire writers/content creators – Hence, we felt it was the best time to start something by ourselves.

6. Introduce us to team TSD.

I, Anuraag Peesara, am the co-founder and CEO of this media house. We have five other co-founders, who contribute immensely in their own way. Kushagr Dixit (Co-founder) is the lead video content producer and plans our future programs, whilst Prathamesh Palshikar (Co-founder) primarily manages all our written content on our website, www.thesportsdoyen.com

Sai Gautham (Co-founder and business development head) and Santosh Samudrala (Co-founder and Social media head) manage our social media handles. Shivam Pathak and Medha Kattige have been an immense presence in our organization as well. Shivam is one of our prime graphics editors whilst Medha helps us with badminton content and SEO management.

Sulaksh Dixit (co-founder) and I take care of the video editing, also appearing on the live shows regularly. I am also in charge or bringing in guests for our talk shows, from well-known sporting personalities to amateur and professional writers.

IISM alumnus – Rohan Gulaty, Manish Sharma, Akshay Kadam, Pranav Kotai feature regularly on our channel, helping us create video content. Atul Kumar Maurya, our batchmate, is a major presence as well.

7. How has your journey as a team of Sports Entrepreneurs been so far?

It has been a very exciting ride for all of us, and incredibly gratifying above everything else. We had the privilege of talking to some of the “Doyens” of their respective fields, like former English captain David Gower, legendary cricket commentators Jonathan Agnew, Gautam Bhimani and Henry Blofeld, and the prime voices of football – Clive Tyldesley, Peter Drury, Jon Champion, Jim Proudfoot etc.

They have taught us to be nice and humble no matter how far we go, a trait that definitely helped us a lot in carrying out interviews with them. Since we dwell a lot on content quality – the growth has been slow and steady. Working with all my teammates, personally, helped me understand their strengths and best attributes, that I hope to put into better use in the coming months.

8. In what ways did IISM contribute towards your venture flourishing?

Primarily, IISM helped me meet all of my co-founders and in no other place would I have found such passionate sports lovers. IISM has constantly instilled belief in our ideas, also promoting us to aim for something big.

9. What is The Sports Doyen focusing on in terms of content creation?

We aim to create varied content in the coming months, but our primary focus is on bringing fans/experts of the sport together, and making them react to the latest happenings in their respective sports. By doing so, we want to create a platform for all sports lovers where they can find fans of the game speaking their hearts out, which we believe can be more relatable and enjoyable to fans than the talk shows we see on major broadcasting channels.
We also host a bunch of amazing experts and experienced cricket writers as well, so we stand somewhere between the fans and experts, on the thin line separating both of them.

10. Do you have plans of expansion or collaboration for your venture?

Yes, we do. We collaborate with our friends at “More Than A Game”, “We Express Sports” on a regular basis – A couple of upcoming media houses. We aim to collaborate with more renowned faces to feature in our videos in the future and also work with a lot companies to garner sponsorship for the videos that we make. A lot of plans to make this bigger and better, but some initial steps to be traced first.

11. What sets The Sports Doyen apart?

I can proudly say no channel in India has created a playlist of interviews with all of Cricket and Football’s most popular commentators, something that has garnered us a lot of attention in the coming months. We have managed to create a network of experts who bring in a lot of viewers with themselves as well, which is what sets our media house apart.

12. Where do you see The Sports Doyen in the near future?

In the coming future, we at TSD aim to create more talk shows and video content that can drag the eyes of the entire sporting audience towards. We also intend to increase the number of YT channels to ensure we can cater different audiences with more ease. We also intend to make TSD the home of some quality write-ups, with respect to our website. We already have a few and we aim to build on that.

13. Where do you see yourselves as Sports Entrepreneurs in the industry in the upcoming years?

We hope to make our presence felt among the big media houses in the country. We already are associated with some of India’s upcoming content makers at TSD and hope to make ourselves India’s prime sports channel on YouTube.

14. A piece of advice for aspiring Sports Management students/ professionals/ entrepreneurs.

No matter what you aspire to be, it is important to understand creativity and audacity has no bounds and limits. If we, in our early days, would’ve hesitated to text some of the big guests we eventually had on our channels, we wouldn’t be here. Never be scared of taking big shots, always trust in your abilities to take yourself forward.

Answered by Anuraag Peesara, CEO and co-founder, TSD
Credits: Sai Gautham – Business Development Head
Santosh Samudrala – Social Media Head
Kushagr Dixit – Video Content Head
Prathamesh Palshikar – Website content head
Sulaksh Dixit – Graphics and video editing head