Building India’s Everyday Sports Habit: How Hudle Makes It Easy to Play

India’s sports story is often told through stadium lights and superstar highlights. Suhail Narain, co-founder & CEO of Hudle, argues the real revolution starts closer to home: making it simple for a 30–40-year-old in Delhi (or Jaipur, or Mumbai) to find a court, find players, and just play. In our conversation, he walked through Hudle’s origin, what the platform solves for both players and facilities, and why consistent execution—not flashy launches—is the company’s edge.

From sports passion to product focus

Suhail’s “why” is disarmingly simple: sport was the one thing he loved and stuck with. Early experiments eventually crystallized into a clear, scalable problem to solve—accessibility. For the ‘90s kids who grew into desk jobs, getting a casual game together is surprisingly hard: Where do you play? Who do you play with? How do you learn and improve? Hudle set out to remove those frictions, one by one.

What Hudle solves for players (today and next)

Think of Hudle as a sports community platform aimed at recreational athletes:

• Find a place: Discover and book nearby courts and fields without endless calls and DMs.

• Find people: Match with players at similar skill levels so games are fun, not lopsided.

That’s the core today. Suhail’s longer-term checklist includes coaching discovery, right-fit gear, and even recreational-level performance tracking—bringing pro-style insights to everyday players so they can see progress and stay motivated.

What Hudle solves for facilities

On the supply side, Hudle is equal parts software and strategy partner:

• Operations platform (SaaS): Booking and schedule management, memberships, invoicing, accounting, and CRM—purpose-built for sports venues.

• Demand engine: Access to Hudle’s million-plus player community for discovery and bookings.

• Hands-on guidance: Dedicated account managers who advise on pricing, programming, marketing, expansion locations, coach recruitment—even vendor intros for things like lighting upgrades.

SaaS plus a strong, localized community—and a human, consultative layer—is what many facilities lack. Hudle stitches those together.

Why the founding team (and early core team) matters

Hudle wasn’t built by college buddies. Suhail met his co-founders along the journey and leaned into complementary skill sets. Over time, a 7–8 person core emerged that “keeps the ship running,” enabling Suhail to stay out of the weeds when needed. It’s a useful reminder: the right people at the right time can be as valuable as the right idea.

India’s sports culture is changing—from watch to play

We tend to measure “sports in India” by IPL ratings, Olympic medals, and pro leagues. Suhail’s lens is different: participation. Ten years ago, fitness meant walks, yoga, or the gym. Today, badminton, cricket, and pickleball are mainstream ways to stay active and social. That matters because participation at scale builds the next generation of athletes, habits, and communities. Hudle’s role is to lower the barrier to entry so more people try—and stick with—sport.

India is a massive opportunity—with micro-markets inside

The cliché is true: India’s scale is staggering. But Suhail stresses the nuance: move 10 km in the same city and behaviors shift—spending patterns, schedules, even language. What worked in Delhi didn’t copy-paste to Mumbai. Chandigarh behaves differently from Jaipur. Building in India demands constant unlearning, local customization, and humility about assumptions. The upside: if you can solve for these micro-markets, you unlock a truly national platform.

What’s next: doing the unglamorous things well, repeatedly

Hudle is now in ~70 cities, with deeper penetration in Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat, and early traction in Bangalore. The near-term focus isn’t a splashy launch; it’s consistency:

• Replicate what works, iterate city by city.

• Keep improving matching, discovery, and booking flows.

• Build tech that quietly removes friction while the team handles the “finer details” on the ground.

There’s product work in the pipeline—better player matching, easier coaching discovery, gear, and more—but the “secret sauce,” as Suhail puts it, is the compounding effect of small improvements done again and again.

The takeaway

If you care about India’s health, community, or simple joy, Hudle’s mission lands: make exercise fun by making sport easy. The more we play, the stronger the culture becomes—from casual weeknight doubles to youth pathways that might, one day, yield medals. But first, give people a court, a crew, and a click. Hudle’s betting that’s how you change a country’s relationship with sport—one booking at a time.