The Sportstec Advantage: Re-shaping the future of sports in India

As wide and prevalent as the domain of sports is in India, Indian sportsmen and sporting teams are nevertheless subjected to immense criticism when it comes to the aspect of technological investment to further their potential. Coaches and trainers do help nurture the inherent talent within sportsmen, but technological aid in the form of performance analytical tools provides an edge to the coaches’ training regimen.

To fill this void between talent and technology in the Indian sports sector, Sportstec, an Australian company providing such performance analytical tools and systems, recently launched the start of its operations in India. The company is quite established Down Under, with exceptional noteworthy presence worldwide in countries like UK, Brazil, USA, France, Germany, South Africa and Argentina.

Speaking during the launching event, Mr. Simon Jackson, Sportstec Australia Head, elaborated on the specific focus that the company aimed to offer to the Indian sports market, especially for sports like hockey and football. The winners of the recently concluded Hockey India League (HIL), Ranchi Rhinos, saw the fruits of adopting the Sportstec performance analytical tool, as they went on demonstrate their superiority on the hockey field, coming back from a goal deficit to win the first edition of the tournament.

With core emphasis on offering performance analytical tools that is easy to assimilate by the coaches and trainers, Sportstec’s solutions can be utilised across various sports verticals. According to Mr. Jackson, this aspect about Sporstec’s products further enhances their value and viability. The flagship product of the company ‘SportsCode’ has especially garnered immense appreciation from all sporting quarters.

“SportsCode is one of the most popular and widely sold products of Sportstec. We do have other products as well, however SportsCode is the one which covers almost all aspects of performance analysis and gives a wholesome solution to a team or a coach who are interested in every minute detail about the game. It is a great ‘One Stop Shop’ solution as a performance analysis package. Coaches can retrieve videos, statistics and even devise on-field strategies through sharing of critical game and opposition related information. All of this can be done during real match time. Once a coach or an analyst collects all the data, it can be used as an excellent reference point for post match analysis meetings and pre-match briefings. There are some excellent data-basing features that help you keep track of specific team and/or player strategies, strengths and weaknesses which can be tracked over a period of time. This helps in athlete management and development from the grass root level. All this data is of huge importance both to the player as well as the coach as it enables and ‘evidence based learning’ approach where they can track and monitor performance”, explains Mr. Venugopal Rajagopalan, technical manager in-charge of the training for the Sportstec products.

Although Sportstec intends to focus on the sporting sector in India, its goals include catering to not just coaches of not just professional teams and athletes, but also to those providing their coaching assistance at the grass-root level. This would in-turn enable budding Indian sporting talent to be on-par with overseas sporting talents with the right kind of technological assistance, especially when they make a foray into the professional sporting realms.