How one founder is using AI to land a knockout business opportunity

Sometimes AI isn’t just about doing things more efficiently in your business. It’s about spotting whole new opportunities. That’s exactly what Ben Amanna, the entrepreneur behind Boxraw, has done.

When Amanna founded the company in Coventry in 2017, it specialised in selling kit and clothing for boxing, such as shorts and gloves. It’s a sport that Amanna has a passion for. It was boxing that gave him the confidence to stand up to bullies at school when he hit his teens.

By 2021, his company had revenues of £6m. But around that same time he spotted another opportunity, which the emergence of AI only made more compelling – boxing analytics.

Casual viewers think that boxing is just about landing the occasional knock-out blow, says Amanna. But true boxing enthusiasts watch the fights to see more complicated things like combinations of punches or legwork.

What if AI could be used to analyse these aspects of the sport, he wondered? Typically, this has been done by humans, rewatching fights and inputting the data manually.

What if tech could analyse the biomechanical data in real time? He set up Boxraw Labs to investigate the possibilities, while still scaling his core business around boxing clothing and equipment.

At first, Amanna’s idea was to offer this service to boxers and their training teams. Then he stumbled across the bigger opportunity, he told me. What if they could offer this extra information to broadcasters to share with viewers during a bout or even open up a new lucrative market in live sports betting, including in-play live betting?

He has recently created his minimum viable product that analyses all the TV video feeds, combined with an overhead camera in the ring and two extra fixed cameras on the ringside.

The software then analyses the footage to create the relevant data for sports fans. They might want to bet on things like, “who will be the first to make a certain technical combination?”, explains Amanna. His new tech can provide an objective standard to measure that in near real-time.

“It’s a sport that’s been ‘grandfathered’ for so long,” says Amanna. He thinks it’s due a tech makeover and admits it’s been tough to run this team, almost like an internal start-up, in parallel to his main business.

He’s worked with three different CTOs to get the direction right, with a staff of around ten people. It has taken up valuable time. “I’m a non-technical founder,” says Amanna, “but I’m a student of the game who’s willing to learn. And our overall goal for Boxraw remains the same, to be the reason why the world got into boxing.”

He thinks the results will eventually be worth it, helping his business land a decisive blow.

Here’s a key lesson: founders who are active in business know their sector like no other. They are best placed to spot opportunities before anyone else in the mainstream has seen them.