This lawyer-turned-entrepreneur is making sports accessible in India
Sonam Taneja is the Co-founder and Head of Business Development at Hudle, a sports tech platform which connects players with sports venues, and helps in optimising facility management.
From a young age, Sonam Taneja was an active child, dabbling in sports like badminton, pickleball, padel, football, and volleyball.
But sports or entrepreneurship was never on the cards for her when it came to initially choosing a career.
Instead, Taneja put sports on the backburner and took a different route, studying law and beginning her career in a law firm. In 2014, however, things changed when she discovered long-distance running, which reignited her passion for sports.
This passion eventually led her to leave her career as a lawyer and become an entrepreneur.
Today, Taneja is the Co-founder and Head of Business Development at Hudle, a sports tech platform. Hudle connects players with sports venues and helps in optimising facility management.
“It has a consumer-facing platform using which people can book sports facilities, and there's another platform using which a sports facility owner or manager can completely automate and manage their operations very efficiently,” she explains to HerStory.
Work hard, play hard
Sonam Taneja
Hudle started as a sports events platform in 2016, founded by Taneja’s husband, Suhail Narain. Later in 2018, it pivoted and launched its application and community platform.
.Though she was working in a different profession at the time, her growing interest in the platform and her passion for sports naturally led her to become involved with Hudle’s journey.
“Slowly, I realised that it’s common for people to go out, pay, and play sports. The trend was growing. I changed professions after that, and just before COVID, I joined Hudle. I wanted to explore how the industry was evolving,” she says.
However, Taneja did not join the startup as a co-founder. She led the business' Growth and Strategy, later transitioning into being the co-founder in 2023.
“I started with other roles as I wanted to explore the industry and get a deeper and better understanding,” she adds.
She recalls that in the initial years, she used to build sports communities in different cities. For instance, she leads a women's football community across Delhi-NCR.
In the beginning, there was uncertainty about where she fit within the sports sector.
“At first, I thought my role was to bring women together to play sports. But then I realised how much I enjoyed selling the idea of Hudle and getting more venues on board. That’s when I shifted my focus and decided to contribute in a larger way,” she adds.
Sports infrastructure is crucial for women players, believes Taneja, adding that the real problem is not just about getting people to play—it is about having enough good facilities.
“We need more places that offer quality infrastructure, where women feel safe, there’s proper parking, clean washrooms, and everything feels accessible,” she says.
“It may sound strange to male players, but a lot of women care about these things. And we give this feedback to a lot of sports partners that they must have all these facilities and amenities,” she continues.
Taneja continues to be deeply involved with the community she has built to date.
“If I'm going to a different city for a meeting. So I'll probably plan a pickleball game with the women's community there. I keep engaging with women through sports,” she says.
She adds these meet-ups are a great way for her to introduce these women to the concept of the sports app.
“My vision is to make sports so accessible that people can make sports a way of life. They're able to play every day if they wish to,” she adds.
In the past, people had to call or visit a sports facility to check availability. Often there used to be double bookings and last-minute cancellations.
“With the Hudle platform, all bookings are streamlined online, providing a better experience for both users and facility managers. This system eliminates double bookings, simplifies payment processing, automates memberships, and even handles invoicing efficiently,” she adds.
Challenges and learnings
On a personal level, Taneja feels that entrepreneurs struggle with work-life balance.
“When you're doing a job, you can shut your brain after a while, but here there's no shutting off. You're always thinking about work and that was a huge challenge for me initially,” she says.
This situation is now a new normal for her, says Taneja, adding that she has accepted it as a part of her life.
“You don't think as much about work when you are playing. You develop ways to switch off, and this happens with practice over time,” she believes.
The switch from a 9-5 job to entrepreneurship was also a huge shift, she adds.
She shares that she had to do a lot of unlearning because she came from a very different professional setup as compared to the workflow and culture of a startup. She also had to learn how business development works, alongside adapting to a largely unorganised industry, which was a challenge initially.
Looking back at her journey, one of the important things she realised is that one can learn at any age, believes Taneja.
“You need to be open-minded to the things happening around you and to the feedback you receive. Often, when we're in a job, we can become restricted to our specific roles. But I feel like startups show you that learning doesn't stop if you have an open mind. That's an important takeaway I want to share with others,” she says.
(The copy was updated.)
Edited by Jyoti Narayan
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