DDA’s Qutab Golf Course to enter digital era in February with online bookings, app-based scorecards

Qutab Golf Course, designed and developed by Delhi Development Authority (DDA), will start accepting online bookings and provide state-of-the-art statistics to the golfers starting 1 February. The 250-yard public golf course, which offers a pay-and-play facility, needed non-members to physically make bookings in the past. That will all change after the contract was awarded to India-headquartered Thriwe.Under the terms of the contract, the company will provide a dedicated mobile app for the Qutab Golf course which will have the ability to manage bookings, capture scorecard, Tee-time Inventory Management among other things.Dhruv Verma, Thriwe founder and CEO, explained the deal and the importance of it. “DDA have about 1500 club members at the Qutab Golf Course. It includes high profile people from Lieutenant General of Delhi, the Governor of Delhi to the DDA Commissioner. And the idea is with such high profile people, how do we build an efficient environment digitally. That’s where we step in. With our experience working with companies like Amex, HSBC, Mastercard, Visa, they found us credible enough to give us the contract.”“Things like how you book a game of golf, how you submit your scorecards, how you submit your billing system, the entire journey of a member of Qutab Golf Course and a non-member, who are pay-and-play, from booking a game to after it will be impacted - in a positive way.”“A golfer is not a regular customer. He’s an affluent person whose needs are very different to a regular sport user. We needed to factor that in. When the tee sheet opens for 120 people, to book a slot, it takes three minutes for the whole thing to get full over a weekend. People wait on Friday at 11 and by 11.03, all the slots are gone. For that to be seamless, it needs a lot of thinking and a robust technology platform to achieve that.”“It is not just about the golfer. It is also about how we can make a golf course efficient, billing efficient, tee sheet management efficient, booking sheets more efficient. It is a two-way thing.”Saaniya Sharma, who uses the facilities at Qutab Golf Course, welcomed the move. “I’m not a member of the club. What the digitisation does is it helps me in understanding if I can get a round of golf there. I don’t live in Delhi and come from Chandigarh. Now I can check online if a slot is available for me to get a round and at what time. It changes the productivity and efficiency for everyone. Earlier if I used to get a slot, I would have to be immediately present and get going without a warm up but that would change now. Now we can play a day accordingly. It’s more convenient.”Sharma who has been playing golf for 17 years and 13 as a professional is part of the Women’s Golf Association of India (WGAI) having competed on the Ladies European Tour in the past.She believes the stats would help the golfer in better understanding and improving their game. “The stats definitely help. It tells you what areas of the game you need to improve upon, where did you make a mistake and study whether it is a pattern or just a one-off day. The numbers help you improve your game. Some people look at their equipment to see how far a ball needs to go. Human factor is kind of cut off from this scenario. Who knew when I started playing golf that we would have access to so much information!”