Catch Sport's founder, Karim Bashir, is very familiar with sourcing sponsorship for sport from his days as an international fencer. As with all sports, fencing can be very expensive and funding is crucial to the affordability of top class training and high-level performance at competitions.

Unfortunately an online sponsorship service wasn’t available at the time. So Karim had to research and contact potential sponsors using the traditional methods of phone and mail. This process took months, was of limited success, and was generally based on the results he had already achieved. Karim was always more successful in his attempts to source sponsorship once he had been selected for major championship teams.

After graduating in 1996, Karim worked as a broker in the energy market and then a non-technical IT consultant in London. During this time he gained valuable experience in the areas of Business Development, Sales and Negotiation, Relationship Management, Bid/Tender Management and owning and running a P&L account. In addition he developed a knowledge of IT and general business acumen as well as establishing a wide network of contacts.

On his return from a travelling sabbatical Karim decided to combine his business experience with his passion for sport and began writing the Catch Sport business plan. Clearly identifying that the web was the way forward he enlisted the services of Ian Cann from Hexagon Computers Ltd who are now Catch Sport's technology partner. Thanks also go to Mark Myers for his technological input and support.

Having decided to use the web as the predominant tool for business choosing Hexagon Computers as our technology partner was easy and they set about creating a user friendly site that would allow athletes to post their profiles for sponsors to view. The layout of each profile is identical allowing for efficient searching, filtering and management.

Karim has been working full time on the project since September 2005 whilst Hexagon Computers provide IT support on a consultative basis. This journey has only just begun and with Karim’s passion to support sport in the UK Catch Sport has an extremely bright future.