Bhavit Sheth is a co-founder and COO of one of the world’s newest unicorns, Dream11.com. 

This India-based tech startup, valued at over a billion dollars, has cornered the Indian market on fantasy sports, beginning with cricket’s Indian Premier League and has grown to include the NBA, NFL, EPL, La Liga, NHL, and many more to become India’s biggest fantasy sports platform. We're talking all of the plus the effect of COVID-19 on sports.

Show Notes

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Dream11.com

Theme music by: Ruel Morales

Audio Transcript

Brian Schoenborn  0:01  

Hello, Hello Hey everybody. Our guest today is calling in from the other side of the world. We’re all staying at home and joining us quarantine COVID-19 Coronavirus. He’s calling in from Bombay, India. He’s actually one of the co founders, one of the two co founders of one of the world’s newest unicorns. So tech startup valued at over a billion dollars. Based in India, he’s got a pretty cool story behind that. And we’ve got some similar roots as well. So before, before we get into it, give it up my friend Bob sharp. My name is Brian Shin born. I’m an explorer people, places and culture. In my travels spanning over 20 countries across four continents, I’ve had the pleasure of engaging and authentic conversations with amazingly interesting people. These are their stories on location and unfiltered presented by 8B Media. This is have to see.

Brian Schoenborn  1:09  

What’s up, man. How you doing? I see you holding up over there.

Bhavit Sheth  1:13  

Hey, thanks, Ben for that intro. Yeah, it’s a tough time. It’s your time but holding up well,

Brian Schoenborn  1:20  

it’s crazy, right? I mean, I just I just, you know, I feel like I remember the beginning of the year when think when I started coming from China, I just you know, okay, who knows what it’s gonna be, but we knew it was gonna start spreading. But it feels like like it didn’t really hit at least in America until about a month ago. Like that’s when it really started taking off. And it went from like, life as usual to like every day as an eternity. Like a bit of lockdown for like a year. How’s it going over there, man? What’s going on in India with it?

Bhavit Sheth  1:54  

Yes, it is if it has affected a lot, but I was actually supposed to be in China. In January, I’ll ruin Yeah. All all bookings on everything. And then, you know, my brother being a doctor obviously had some early information on the entire Coronavirus situation and something that was developing in China. So he told me that it’s best not to go there. It’s best to avoid going to China.

Brian Schoenborn  2:22  

So you’re in Florida before they shut the country down then.

Bhavit Sheth  2:25  

Yes. And, and the best part about it is the person they’re supposed to meet in China. You know, I told him that Listen, you know, there’s this situation which is developing and it’s best avoid doing this meeting now. And the person was like, yeah, by that logic, I should never be coming to India.

Brian Schoenborn  2:46  

You just don’t know.

Bhavit Sheth  2:50  

But obviously, he didn’t. Well, obviously at that time, he didn’t know that it’s this bad. Boy, there’s a there’s a point 01 percent chance that something may happen right. But they came into 100% chance very soon.

Brian Schoenborn  3:02  

Well, I mean, that’s you know, it’s debatable, right. I mean, I don’t want to get into the politics. I’m excited want China to get mad at me because I love that country. But uh, I can tell you those numbers are probably debatable at best. They have a tendency of capping things off at a certain level, but Yeah, dude, it’s crazy that you caught that you were able to change that before, man like you. I mean, you could have you could have been a high risk man. Yes, like that’s crazy dude.

Bhavit Sheth  3:30  

So I could have been the person who started the Coronavirus spread in India. You could have been

Brian Schoenborn  3:37  

patient number, you can be patient.

Bhavit Sheth  3:42  

That’s great. But that didn’t happen. Luckily, you know, my brother told me say this cancel that trip. And But currently, India is in complete lockdown. The state that I am in actually has the maximum number of cases Yeah. And so, but the government is doing a great job is trying to contain over it right now. In fact, if they find a positive case anywhere, they’ll immediately make that and containment zone and the entire one kilometer stretch around it would be sanitized and no one is allowed to get out from the Yes, they just make sure that the essentials are available to the people in the containment zone. So they’ve gone real hard on the lockdown. Obviously, the thought process for them is that human lives and more important, economic can be revived. Obviously, economy has taken a big hit. And we won’t know the full impact of that till you know, a few months.

Brian Schoenborn  4:54  

Yeah, it’s gonna be a while for sure. But it’s I mean, I think about like, You know, like I went, I went to India actually visited you in an ad for a while. A couple years ago, I sit there and I think like how, like, if India were doing we’re trying to take the same measures that America was taking. India would be done, be done for this because there’s so many people everywhere, right? There’s just I mean, everywhere you go, there’s people on the streets and just living life or selling products

Bhavit Sheth  5:24  

on cities very high. Mm hmm. Yeah. So if this was to spread very fast, you know, containment would be very difficult.

Brian Schoenborn  5:34  

Yeah, I’d say that’s probably why we’re seeing things with like, and in the US, like, New York, New York State has more cases has more cases than any other country in the world right now. Right. Right. Because Manhattan’s so densely populated right Manhattan’s Queens Brooklyn that you know, the five boroughs. They’re getting devastated over there. Meanwhile, over in California, where I’m at, you know, the our governor instituted a lockdown stay at home order. lockdown for everyone except for non essential people, you know, your food workers, restaurants, deliveries, your transportation kind of stuff. And people have been kind of adhering to it. So we’re not seeing nearly as much of a spike over here as we are in New York. Who knows? I mean, that could change. It could change. That’s early. But I think the big thing right now is that everybody’s staying at home staying in place, just writing it out as much as it sucks. I mean, drive is driving me crazy. It’s driving me crazy. I think, like today I had a god I just I’m like, I feel like I’m on vacation. Like I’m eating nothing but junk food. might ask for like hours. I’m working but I’m sitting on my ass for hours. And I’m gonna come out of this thing like 50 pounds of yours.

Bhavit Sheth  6:47  

And I know we’ll talk about this later, as well, but there’s no sports going on anywhere. So even when you’re sitting at home, you don’t know what to watch except for movies on netflix.

Brian Schoenborn  6:59  

Right? Right. Have you seen the tiger King? Live not Oh, dude, do crazy. It’s crazy. I don’t know if it’s available on Netflix in India yet but like, it’s a documentary about like basically like, stupid white people shit. Like white redneck people these three different three different people that all own competing Tigers use America but it’s like that’s just where it starts and it gets so much crazier dude like shout out to Netflix and Tiger Can you check that shit out? Dude, it’s good. I like a five part series or so. Speaking of sports, though, obviously sports are shut down everywhere. All the major sports here are postponed indefinitely baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, you know all that stuff. And I know that based on what you do, it affects you quite a bit as well. So