Indian Racing League investors to deploy ₹150 crore over the next three years

The racing company is backed by infrastructure mogul Akhilesh Reddy, director of infrastructure firm Meil Advanced Technologies Pvt. Ltd (MEIL), who owns a majority stake in RPPL. Dabur chairman Mohit Burman also has a minority stake of about 5% in the league which he has invested in his personal capacity. Its other stakeholders are racers Aditya Patel and Armaan Ebrahim who are co-founders and directors of the league as well as Abhinandan Balasubramanian, another co-founder.

The investors made an initial investment of ₹150 crore towards the street circuit infrastructure or developing race tracks on ground. About ₹60 crore was invested in safety equipment, electronics, etc., and the running cost of the season, including operations, event execution and marketing, was a further ₹50 crore. For the next season, it has earmarked another ₹50 crore for operational expenses.

The company expects a return on investment over the next four to five years. It hopes to get returns from its sponsorships as well as media rights. This year it had over half a dozen sponsors which included hospitals, infrastructure firms, beverage, tyre and lubricant companies, among others. These include Apollo Hospitals, ExxonMobil, Kingfisher and Redbull.

The league was conceptualised in 2018 and was earlier known as X1Racing League with an investment of $1 million from a group of angel investors, family offices and early-stage venture firms. It follows a six team format named after various cities including Hyderabad, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kochi and Goa. The teams went head to head over a four week period and this was broadcast on Star Sports. The league was won by GodSpeed Kochi.

Aditya Patel, its co-founder said motorsports isn’t the easiest of sports to organise in India, especially at a large scale level. Patel said that in most countries, races are organised on proper race tracks, except The Formula E championship which is done on street circuits. The league was held in two locations in Chennai and Hyderabad.

“We don’t have numbers from our television viewership yet since the league concluded only recently. It has been difficult to take this sport to the masses. Even if we take the case of the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida, it’s a state of the art facility which is in a location which isn’t favourable for people around Delhi to visit. So, for us, we needed to take it to the masses. Street racing was on our mind. At the end of the day, this is what the country needs to build interest in motorsports,” said Patel.

The format of the league is that each team has four drivers, with a mix of Indian and international drivers and runs across four weeks. This is a gender neutral platform and for the next year, the company is expecting to make this a five or six week programme.

“Infrastructure is a huge challenge in a country like India for this sport. While one part of the story is the infrastructure itself, another part of the story is importing cars that follow safety standards which invite a lot of duties,” he added.

The league also intends to go beyond physical racing and will further develop its eSports racing, which is a digital-simulator-based racing competition held in Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Delhi.