# THIS ARTICLE IN DUTCH
by Frank Molema | 14 November 2019
Anyone playing cricket as an amateur can use some coaching. Then, the tips and tricks of a trainer must stick. Moreover, it is useful if you can find advice from a few months earlier. The startup Ludimos tries, with the help of an online platform, to bring players and trainers together in a well-organized manner.
Founded in September 2019 in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Ludimos is the brainchild of Said Zadou and Madan Raj Rajagopal. They found that while practicing their sport they had difficulty remembering the feedback from their trainer. "Moreover, the coach cannot show me that I did something wrong six months ago," says Moroccan-Dutch Zadou.”An online platform where coaches and players can meet is the solution."
Artificial intelligence
Ludimos not only offers players and coaches the opportunity to communicate, players can also upload videos of themselves, to which trainers then can respond. Ludimos also extracts information from the videos via artificial intelligence. For example, cricket is all about the speed of the ball and the distance between the thrower and the person who has to hit the ball.
For the time being, Ludimos focuses on cricket only. "Many people think: why cricket?", Says Zadou. “If you look at the number of players and fans, cricket is perhaps the second sport in the world. In addition, there is little technical support in this sport. For soccer I can list dozens of companies trying to improve the sport, but with cricket there are not enough companies that build software.”
"We do not want to replace coaches, but rather help them. We focus on coaches who have the knowledge, but not the means, to transfer that knowledge"
Tennis, golf and hockey are next
Zadou and his Indian partner Rajagopal hope that cricket will become more popular in Europe and that more people will start playing. The goal is to add sports such as tennis, golf and hockey to Ludimos in a year's time. That is technically a bit easier than soccer, for example. Before that sport will become available in Ludimos, the company still has to take steps.
Ludimos currently has two customers and around two thousand users. One of those customers is Bloemendaal cricket club, which pays 4 euros per month for each member using Ludimos. Another client is a private coach in South Africa, who previously used WhatsApp, Dropbox and Skype for his coaching. With Ludimos he can do everything on a single platform. "We do not want to replace coaches, but rather help them," says Zadou. "We focus on coaches who have the knowledge but do not have the means to transfer that knowledge."
Save money with the tool
Zadou notes that foreigners are flown over to the Netherlands who give cricket training in the evenings. A coach from South Africa or Australia, for example. For this clubs like Bloemendaal have to pay good money. With Ludimos, coaches no longer have to come to the Netherlands in person, but can transfer their tips and tricks via the online platform. "If you can reduce the costs of coaches with our tool, you can spend the money you save on something else."
Zadou sees the small Dutch market, with only dozens of clubs and hundreds of players, as a test market. The intention is to expand to countries where cricket is more popular, such as South Africa, England and Australia. Ludimos focuses on starting cricket players. “We want to start small and not yet compete with the big companies. If you go directly to the professionals, you will not be taken seriously.”
“I would like to add three customers in the coming two months. It would be nice if we could start 2020 with around five thousand users"
Tiktok
Ludimos searched for suitable coaches via LinkedIn. Zadou is also thinking of using Tiktok, a social medium - popular in China - with which short music videos can be made and shared. Why advertise on that platform? “The people we want to reach make use of it. If you see that one medium is crowded, you have to look for new media. Facebook, for example, is already packed with advertisements. That is why we are looking for other channels to spread our idea."
Although Ludimos has been around for just a few months, Zadou still hopes to get a big boost this year. “I would like to add three customers in the coming two months. It would be nice if we could start 2020 with around five thousand users.”
For more information: Ludimos.com