Swiggy Sports Gets Government Nod Ahead Of World Pickleball League

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs approved on Wednesday the incorporation of Swiggy Sports Pvt. as a wholly owned subsidiary of Swiggy Ltd., the owner of the Mumbai franchise ahead of the World Pickleball League.

Swiggy Sports will belong to the sports activities, amusement and recreation activities industry, and engage in sports team ownership, management, talent development, event and facility organisation, offering career services, acquiring broadcasting and sponsorship rights, and promoting sports events through various business models, according to an exchange filing on Wednesday.

Following the food aggregator's second-quarter results in December, Swiggy had approved the incorporation of a new unit for sports, amusement and recreation activities.

Swiggy sees an early-mover opportunity in investing in pickleball, a tennis-like sport that is quickly gaining popularity across the globe, Rohit Kapoor, chief executive of the company's food marketplace business, had said during a call with analysts on Dec. 3.

"There was an opportunity for us to be very early in the game, acquire the rights to own one of the teams in the World Pickleball League," he had explained. "We have gone and acquired the Pickleball team rights for the city of Mumbai and that's a very limited play that we have there. The company has been formed because this is sub-course."

The first edition of the World Pickleball League, co-founded by former tennis player couple Gaurav Natekar and Arati Ponnappa Natekar, is scheduled to be held from Jan. 24 to Feb. 2 at Mumbai's Cricket Club of India. The league currently has six teams: Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

When asked about future investment plans into Swiggy Sport, Kapoor had said: "At this point in time, it is purely restricted to owning rights of owning the Mumbai pickleball team. There is no other plan at this point in time to expand into sports at all."