Sportstech startup KhiladiPro raises $1 million in a pre-Seed funding round

KhiladiPro, a year-old sportstech startup based in Bengaluru, has raised $1 million in a pre-seed funding round as it attempts to redefine the way young sporting talent is discovered, assessed, and trained in India.

The funding round was co-led by Shastra VC and MGA Ventures, and included participation from several prominent family offices and angel investors such as M Pallonji, Jeena and Co., Ayaz Billawala, Nimesh Kampani, and Jaimin Bhat.

The startup will use the raised capital to further the development of its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) models and expand its geographic footprint across the country. 

Founded in August 2023 by Utkarsh Yadav, KhiladiPro (or KPro) is one of the few startups in India combining mobile-based visual AI with global athletic training frameworks to deliver expert-grade sports assessments at scale.

The platform offers AI-driven tools that evaluate children’s athletic abilities through video-based inputs, allowing coaches, schools, and even parents to monitor physical performance with standardized feedback.

KhiladiPro’s offerings include KPro Sports Ability Test (SAT), which evaluates motor skills and physical conditioning via mobile assessments, and the Khiladi Ability Index (KAI), a unified athlete rating scale that provides comparative benchmarks across users. These tools are built around international standards like Fundamental Motor Skills (FMS) and the Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model, both widely used by sports development bodies globally. 

The startup has developed more than 56 in-house AI models and claims it is building what it calls a digitally-empowered, Olympic-aligned pipeline for youth athletes. Notably, it has partnered with institutions such as the Karnataka Badminton Association, the Handball Association of India, and Delhi-based cricket league DLCL to expand its reach into schools, academies, and grassroots training hubs.

KhiladiPro’s product suite extends beyond ability testing. The Khiladi Klub program is designed to support high-potential athletes with individualized training resources, while the KPro Olympiad aims to provide school-wide assessments in a competitive format, standardizing how young talent is benchmarked and nurtured.

India’s sports-tech market is projected to reach nearly $1.5 billion by 2033, according to estimates by the IMARC Group. Much of that growth is expected to come from platforms that digitize grassroots sports and deliver scalable coaching infrastructure, areas where KhiladiPro hopes to lead.