The Bridge raises funding from Nithin Kamath's Rainmatter by Zerodha

Nithin Kamath has a line he returns to often - "You don't need to be lucky to build a business, you just need to stay in the game long enough to become lucky".

As the Founder and CEO of The Bridge, I had heard him say it in passing in early conversations, and it lodged itself long enough till it became hard to shake.

Little did I know that in the months since that conversation, that very sentence would end up defining the eight years I had already spent building what is now a prominent platform for non-cricket sports in India, or that Kamath's own venture arm would soon join my journey.

That backing is now official.

The Bridge, my eight-year-old sports media company, has raised a funding round from Rainmatter by Zerodha, the investment vertical of Zerodha, co-founded by Nithin Kamath.

For the founder in me, the development arrives as validation of a belief I have carried since day one: that showing up, day after day, without giving up early, is itself a strategy.

Born as a rebellion

The Bridge was born in 2018 out of what I call an act of rebellion.

In a country where sport has long been synonymous with cricket, I set out to build a media company around what got left out: Olympic sports, athletes without sponsorship deals and disciplines that rarely made digital news.

Looking back, as a first-time entrepreneur with no background in running a business, I now feel that inexperience was advantage. There were no inhibitions or conventions to unlearn, just ideas, energy, and a willingness to learn by building.

That willingness was tested constantly.

Also, building a team of media professionals willing to bet on non-cricket sports was hard in 2018 and remains a challenge even today. That said, several talented youngsters joined my expedition over the years and to them, I will forever be grateful.

Before The Bridge had built enough of an identity, sourcing stories meant going out and finding them, one sport and one athlete at a time.

And above all, there was the question every founder eventually gets asked: how do you make a purpose-driven business sustainable without hollowing out the purpose?

Doors were slammed, literally, by brand managers and agencies who saw no commercial case for sports beyond cricket.

That said, early institutional belief came from people willing to look past that. Narendra Firodia, a social entrepreneur, businessman and an ardent advocate of sport, came in as an angel investor. Similarly, Jaimin Bhat, former CFO of Kotak Mahindra Bank, backed the vision when the numbers alone weren't screaming 'Gold medal'.

Family behind the founder

Across several quarters, my family supported me financially and emotionally.

I requested my mother to fund my modest wedding and redirect the difference into the business. And she duly complied.

My husband, a techie by profession and incidentally a Director with The Bridge, became my ATM during dry spells. Friends lent money with no questions asked.

None of it, however, made the lows disappear.

The COVID-19 pandemic nearly broke the business. There were months at a stretch with no revenue, and there were several days when my brain offered hints that translated to closing operations.

But I chose to trust my heart, and faced each day as it came.

The highs did arrive, albeit in smaller, stranger moments: young women writing to call me a role model and the office erupting when an athlete shared a piece of Bridge-content.

Leander Paes accepting a collaboration request last week, was enough for a fist-pump, as if I was just starting out. That mix of the mundane and the mighty is, to me, the real texture of building something for eight years straight.

It is also what made Rainmatter by Zerodha the right partner.

The pitch and what comes next

I must admit that I did not go through a formal process to reach them; instead, I sent a Twitter DM.

What followed was not a typical pitch.

I walked into a room with fourteen people and a deck I never had to open, because the questions that mattered came from Kamath himself, and one of these were about how I avoid burnout. Surprisingly, not one question about revenue.

For a founder who had decided early that money without alignment was not worth taking, it confirmed that I had found investors patient enough to match the business I was building.

Two years from its tenth birthday, The Bridge is now looking outward: more media products and deeper coverage across more sports, alongside early plans to blend our largely online presence with offline initiatives.

None of it changes the operating principle I have carried since 2018: stay till you become lucky.

The Bridge has stayed. And now, with Rainmatter by Zerodha in its dugout, we intend to keep going.