A youth sports management startup from Kerala has locked in $100,000 in seed capital to push deeper into the American market. Dartle, a B2B SaaS company focused on football academies, closed the round with Inflection Point Ventures taking the lead.
The funding arrives as youth sports organizations worldwide grapple with outdated administrative systems. Spreadsheets, scattered messaging threads, and manual tracking still dominate operations at many academies. Dartle targets that inefficiency directly.
Founded by Nihal Pradeep, Swathi Krishnan, and Nagaraj R Potti, the company has backing from accelerator Upekkha and earned recognition from NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore. Its platform consolidates scheduling, player analytics, and parent communication into one system. The founders claim academies using their product see administrative workloads drop by up to 75%.
That time savings translates into more coaching hours and better athlete development, according to the startup. Performance tracking tools give coaches visibility into individual player progress, moving beyond informal observation.
The numbers show early momentum. Dartle currently serves 14 academies across India, the Middle East, Nepal, and the United States. Eight paid pilots are running in the US market alone. A $60,000 MLS Next sponsorship recently came through, and average contract value doubled from $15,000 to $33,000.
The new capital will accelerate go-to-market efforts, expand AI capabilities, and strengthen partner relationships. Ambitious targets lie ahead.
The startup wants to onboard more than 100 academies globally within the next year. That growth path would push annual recurring revenue toward $1 million. Deeper AI integrations will anchor the push, as Dartle works to separate itself from competitors in the increasingly crowded youth sports software space.
