In India, no sport enjoys a fan base as huge as cricket and is more of a religion than just a sport. But here's a man who opted for golf, which is assumed to be a rich man's game, and turned it into gold. International Business Times spoke to Dhruv Verma, CEO of GolfLan on #BizTalk (a talk show which hosts business leaders) in conversation with Executive Editor, Danish Manzoor.
Before starting GolfLan, Dhruv was a banker and it was a tough call for him to quit a stable career. "Every month my bank account would get credited with a good amount of salary and it was really tough for me to leave that comfort zone and start doing something like this," he said. However, a game of golf with his investors in the UK intrigued him. Dhruv recalls, "I was working in the UK with a bank and there we used to get a golfing allowance so that we can spend some quality time with our clients while playing golf. That is how I got stuck with golf."
After some time, he returned to India. One day, he planned to go for a movie. As there was still a lot of time for the movie, he thought to himself, "let's play a game of golf". He tried searching for it online but to his utter surprise, he was unable to find & book one. "I called up a few golf courses in Delhi and asked them to book a session for me, to my surprise they did not have anything online and said that they have written my name on a register and will get back to me," Dhruv said.
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Intrigued by this, he called up few golf courses in the UK where he used to play and it was the same case even there. From there on, he got a clue on how to turn this problem into a business. He said, "For me, it was really surprising to see that a country such as India which is booming in the technology sector, does not have anything online related to golf. I researched over 80 golf courses in India alone and there was nothing online. The idea of bringing golf to an online platform was really exciting and hence I started working on it."
But as they say, building a business from scratch is not easy at all. The same happened with Dhruv. He had to suffer a lot in the initial stages. He recalls, "Trust me, leaving a permanent job and going on with a start-up is never easy. After like four months my savings were finished, I had to sell my wife's jewellery while credit card bills and EMIs started building up. But, I had a strong will to go ahead with it and that is what finally paid off."
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His company is headquartered in New Delhi and has branches in Dubai, Singapore and South Africa and this March (2018), he is going to open a branch in the United States of America as well.
Dhruv said that the study which he has conducted suggests that this a $60 billion market and if he can capitalise on the new technology, he can really turn it around.
