PadelPark Merges with MS Dhoni’s 7Padel To Scale Turf Sports

Turf sporting startup PadelPark India has merged with MS Dhoni owned competitor 7Padel, as per a release on Wednesday. The merger will aid the two to create a holistic padel ecosystem in the country, it said.

The platform will be built keeping rapid scaling, deeper community engagement and more professionally structured play in mind, the sportstech startup added.

Along with cricketing legend MS Dhoni, the merged entity is also backed by JSW Sports owner Parth Jindal, who has been an early investor in PadelPark.

The startup, which earns most of its revenue from leasing the over 40 courts under its management, turned EBITDA positive in FY24.

Founded by Nikhil Sachdev, Ronak Daftary, and brothers Jigar and Pratik Doshi in 2020, the Mumbai-based startup has been able to tap the burgeoning racket sports space by starting out right when sports like padel and pickleball were beginning to pick up in India.

The popularity of the sport, and PadelPark’s reach in consequence, has grown multifold since. From its first padel court launched in 2020, the sportstech startup has since expanded to offering padel coaching classes across player levels, organising events that are heavily coveted by advertisers.

The startup has also started the construction, leasing, and selling of padel courts via its subsidiary, Sky Padel India. It claims to have built 200 courts till date and is also looking to increase the number of padel courts under its umbrella to 400-500 through scaling a franchise-based model.

Now, it aims to expand beyond elite tier 1 neighborhoods to non-metro cities, Sachdev told Inc42 in a previous conversation, revealing that 30% of the queries received by the company come from cities like Chandigarh, Kochi, Surat, and Jaipur. This is a sentiment echoed by Dhoni.

“In a country with over 10 Mn racquet sport players, Tier I cities have already shown how quickly padel can grow. The next step is taking that momentum into newer markets and making the sport accessible beyond the metros,” he said in a statement.

The cricketer added that 7Padel chose to merge with PadelPark due to its end-to-end infrastructure in the sport, which can be scaled further to “build padel as a professionally run sport across the country.”

There are already 300 courts across the country, up from 70 in 2023. In comparison, there are 77,300 courts across 150 countries globally.