Footrax
Wearable performance tracker and companion app for footballers.
Problem
Player tracking and performance analysis were routine abroad, even at amateur level. In India only top athletes had them. Grassroots players and academies had nothing.
What I did
- Validated demand with academy coaches, players and parents.
- Wrote the app requirements and wireframes, and designed leaderboards, peer comparison and rank progression.
- Sold to academies through trials: 60 of 180 converted.
- Users
- 9,000+
- Academy trials converted
- 60 / 180
- Longer sessions
- ~50%
- Athletes in a national league
- 1,500
How I found the problem
Playing semi-professional football made the gap obvious: tracking and analysis tools common at amateur level abroad reached only the very top players in India. Conversations with academy coaches, players and parents confirmed the demand before the build.
Product decisions
- Make the data worth revisiting
Leaderboards, peer comparison and rank progression, designed with the Octalysis gamification framework, raised average session time by about 50%, measured in Firebase.
- Test with players and coaches
Ran test sessions with both groups and prioritised features from what came back.
- Sell to academies
Academies became the paying channel through trials. A coach dashboard for squad analytics was later built through NextBlock.
Growth
- Academy trials
180 academies trialled the product and 60 became paying partners.
- National youth league
Ran operations for a 1,500-athlete league with 10 sponsors, $30K in revenue and a team of 15.
Screens
Hardware
Device: 2,000°/s gyroscope sampling at 120 Hz over Bluetooth LE 4.2.
