Face the ball, leverage your skill

Mar 27, 2010

Cricket is a religion in India and most Indians are staunch devotees. The gentleman’s game, which is said to be an Indian game accidentally discovered in Britain, has become a money spinner for a wide range of advertisers who piggyback on it to leverage their sales. Not surprisingly, the companies are raking in a record moolah out of the IPL season III.

It is not an exaggeration to say that a majority of Indians would have at some point in their life dabbled in cricket. Many of them hanker in their heart of hearts to play a Bret Lee or Shoaib Akhtar ball. Such cricket aficionado can realise their dreams with the bowling machines made by the city-based Leverage Sports Technologies.

The machines bowl like a seven-year-old kid for a novice and amateur cricketer, while at the same time testing a professional cricketer’s preparedness. No wonder, cricketers fall back on the machines made by LST from Hyderabad to hone their skill.

"We make bowling machines for cricket, field hockey, baseball and tennis. In the domestic market, the cricket machines are the most sought after with tennis coming next," says P.V.Parthasarathi, CEO of Leverage Sports Technologies, in an interview with AndhraBusiness.com.

Excerpts:

1. Are your machines designed, developed and produced indigenously? How much does the import component amount to?
The machines are entirely designed, developed and produced indigenous ly with absolutely no import component in them, except for the electronic components used in the machine. We use the services of some ancillary industries funded by us to make some components. The nets used by players are made by such units.

2. Tell us about your collaboration with foreign companies, both technical and financial?
We don’t have any technical or financial collaboration with any foreign or domestic company. We invested heavily into R&D and came up with the technology indigenously. Foreign contribution could be some two to three per cent and is negligible.
Our company is the only manufacturer of such machines in Asia.

3. What is the range of the products from your stable and what is their price range?
We have machines to suit every pocket and need. Our machines are of three types- softball, hard ball and the others which can bowl both the balls.

The basic machine used for entertainment can come from a minimum of Rs 50,000 to a maximum of Rs 3,50,000, while a professional one starts from Rs 1,00,000 and can go up to a maximum of Rs 12,00,000.

Our fastest bowling machine can bowl at 270 kmph and can replicate a Bret Lee, Praveen Kumar or Shoaib Akhtar’s ball. The machines can even spin the ball.

Before we started making these machines, they were imported from UK and basically bowled balls in the same line and length. But our machines can now bowl a yorker, short-pitched ball or simulate any kind of ball without the batsman knowing beforehand. Thus they come in handy to a batsman to hone his/her talent.

4. What is the share of Leverage in the bowling machine market in India and the world? Tell us about the export of your products to various countries.
We have a 70 per cent share in the domestic market and 30 per cent in the international circuit. Our base ball machines are completely exported to US. We also make golf simulation machines.

The Middle-East, Sri Lanka, Australia, UK and US are our major export markets.

5. Which of your machines is the most sought after? The one which bowls with the tennis ball or hard ball? What is the USP of the machines?
Professionals now practice more with the tennis ball as it reduces the chances of injury and makes them more agile. Ours is the only machine which can spin and swing the tennis ball in the world. The bounce generated by our machine is the same for a hard ball or tennis ball, because of the bounce containing technology they have. This is their USP.

We are now manufacturing special synthetic balls used mostly by professionals and can be used up to three years. The ball is aero-dynamically made similar to a golf ball. We can make around 5,000 such balls a day on demand.

6. Are any new products in the pipeline apart from the 20 already in the market?
We are coming up with a virtual stadium machine, where in a batsman can practice with the digital image of a Zaheer Khan coming forward to bowl, even as the ball is actually bowled by the machine. The machine can assign the speed and agility with which a player, who is fielding, can throw and hit the ball to the stumps after the batsman hits it in a particular direction.

This will help the player’s even practice running between the wickets. It will shortly hit the market at a cost of Rs 1 crore. Patents for 12 features in our products are pending approval. We are continuously studying new technologies like the one used in golf simulation.

We have a technology which can be leveraged to train a person, with the help of a laptop with the connectivity options in it, using satellite enabled technology.

The company will also introduce volleyball and football machines. The football machine helps goal-keeper train for penalty kicks.

7. Do malls, clubs and resorts form a major chunk of your market?
Our market is equally divided between the machines used by professionals and entertainment. We either sell the machines or give them to malls, clubs and resorts on a revenue-sharing basis. But largely, we sell them as managing them becomes a problem. A mall, on an average, makes Rs 1 lakh on the machine per month and recovers the cost of Rs 2.5 lakh in no time.

We are a member of the Indian Association of Amusement Parks and Industries, which facilitates the sales of our machines to resorts, theme parks, malls and water parks. To top it all, the machines use very minimal power.

Marketing was never a problem because of their wide usage, as people got to know by word of mouth. Though we officially have 20 dealers across the country, sales have mostly happened through contacts, as 50 per cent of our customers have facilitated sales for us.
Apart from malls, the machines powered by batteries can also be used in beaches and can work continuously for 15 hours without being recharged.

8. Tell us about the after sales service offered by you?
The machines are rugged and can be used by places of entertainment like malls for up to three to five years without any maintenance. But the machines used in professional cricket continue to work for up to 10 years.

Our machines don’t need regular maintenance and can be trouble-shot by even a layman, as we give the design also to the user. We guarantee the machines for one year.

9. Do you have any tie-ups with advertisers as part of your OOH publicity at malls, clubs and resorts with the likes of Nokia, Knight Riders of IPL, Sprite etc?
Many advertisers are using our machines for OOH publicity. We have tailor-made machines for them. The likes of Kolkata Knight Riders used them for their road shows, where in free IPL tickets were given to persons if they hit a six.

They are now being used even in marriages and functions as a means of entertainment. Such customers either rent them from us or buy them. The Middle-East is a good market for such machines.

10. Name the cricket academies and celebrities who are using your products?
Our customers include the premier training academy for international cricketers, run by the BCCI (Board of Control For Cricket In India), the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore, to local trainee ones in Hyderabad like M.L.Jaisimha Academy, Vijay Paul Academy, Arshad Ayub Academy and Raju’s Cricket Club.

11. Who are your competitors in the domestic and international market? What is the share of export market in your revenues?
As I already told you we don’t have any competitor in the domestic market. In cricket-playing nations like Australia and UK, they buy their products more, though they know that our machines are superior.

That’s why we are marketing our products with the tag `Experience the power of Indian manufacturing.’ All our competitors have been in the field for around 30 years, while we started as recently as 2008. Our achievement is definitely remarkable given our recent foray into this business vertical.

We employ around 200 persons and can make around 10 machines per day, but always make them on receipt of bookings as we continuously upgrade our machines infusing new technology. That the real estate players are offering our machines as a freebie to customers while delivering the homes shows their popularity.

12. Do you have any unique ideas to add to the sporting experience?
We are shortly hitting the cyberspace with a social networking site where in a lakh videos of players in reputed cricketing academies will be uploaded. The services of reputed coaches who have trained the likes of Azharuddin will be commissioned to rate them. They will be analysed using a video analysis software. People who see the videos can also vote for their favourite players.

13. Do you propose any expansion and diversification and how do you plan to raise funds for these?
An IPO is on the cards to fund the financial requirements. Expansion will happen in the newer areas like football and volleyball. We are waiting for the right time to take the move. We are eying tie-ups at the highest body level with the likes of FIFA (Federation of International Football Association). We will leverage them before taking the IPO route.

Many wanted to have a share in the company, but we were not willing to do so. All our finances have only been loans from banks like the Canara Bank which is our main financier and the rest are from internal accruals. No venture capitalist is involved in the project. We might need investments when we launch our virtual machines in football, golf and others.
But we will definitely confine ourselves to sports technology and not get into sports management.

14. Tell us about yourself?
I am basically a B.E in civil engineering and had nothing to do with mechanical engineering which my company is into. We had presence in the food processing industry and manufactured coffee and tea vending machines for corporates like Nestle. We make both the large ones used in corporate offices to the miniature ones, which can be fit into a car which we called ‘Hottie” which can service piping hot coffee or tea for six hours.

We had taken up a few mechanical and electronic projects earlier, our bowling machines are a blend of both these as in robotic technology. In future, robotics is going to play a more pivotal role. A robot, a humanoid of sorts which can bowl, could be on the cards.

My dream is to manufacture a miniature bowling machine, which can suit the purse of any person at Rs 15,000, which can be used within the cosy confines of homes. We are shortly launching this product.