Most AI startup stories these days come out of Bengaluru or Gurgaon with big funding rounds attached. This one is different — and honestly, that's exactly why it caught my eye. On September 19, two siblings from New Delhi launched Tennis Buddy, an AI-powered tennis coaching platform designed for a problem most Indian sports fans know exists but nobody has really solved: what do you do when you train five days a week but nobody is watching you do it?
01.What Tennis Buddy actually does
Tennis Buddy, currently available in its early version, analyses a player's stroke mechanics and match patterns — and instead of spitting out performance statistics, it delivers specific, actionable coaching instructions. The distinction matters. As Ranvijay Sawhney puts it: "Most tools in this space give a player numbers. Numbers do not tell a 14-year-old what to change on their second serve on Monday morning. Coaching is a decision. That is what we are trying to automate, and that is the part nobody has solved yet."
It's a sharp observation about AI products in general, not just sports tech. Dashboards full of metrics are everywhere; the hard part is encoding judgement — knowing what to do about the data — into a system. That's the gap the founders say they are attacking.
02.The founders: a 15-year-old player and a 23-year-old engineer
The duo behind it is unusual. Ranvijay Sawhney is 15 and competes on the national junior tennis circuit, so the product is built by someone who lives the problem daily. His co-founder and sibling, Aryan Verma, is 23, a computer science graduate of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid with coursework at Purdue University and IIT Guwahati, and he leads the engineering side.
Verma is refreshingly blunt about where the difficulty actually lies: "The technical part is not the hard part. The hard part is encoding what a good coach actually knows into a system that holds up across thousands of different players and body types. That rubric is the product. Everything else is plumbing." I've spoken to enough founders building with AI to say this is the most sensible thing I've read all week — the model is the easy bit now; the domain knowledge is the moat.
03.Why coaching access is the real problem
India has thousands of registered competitive tennis players, but specialised coaching remains concentrated around established academies in the big metros. For players and families outside those bubbles, sustained one-on-one coaching is often simply too expensive or too far away. Sawhney again: "There is a very large group of players who are serious, who train five days a week, and who have nobody watching them do it. That is not a niche. That is the market."
This is the same access gap we keep seeing AI close elsewhere — whether it's AI health coaching reaching Tier-2 towns or students using AI tools to learn skills their colleges don't teach. It's a bit like the story of those Delhi students who made an entire AI music video on a shoestring earlier this month: the tools are now cheap enough that young people can build serious things without waiting for permission. Tennis Buddy is positioning itself as an affordable, technology-led alternative for exactly this underserved group — the athlete who trains consistently but has no coach in the stands.
04.What's next for the startup
Details come from the company's own announcement, so treat the numbers as founder-reported for now. Ahead of its public launch, Tennis Buddy says it has crossed 1,500 waitlist sign-ups, and its launch video has generated more than 1 lakh views across platforms. Earlier this year, the founders delivered a private pitch to members of the Olympic Committee of India, after which they were invited to showcase the product in Bengaluru. The company is also in the application process with early-stage accelerator programmes.
The next phase focuses on expanding the coaching rubric and strengthening the feedback loop behind its recommendations, using anonymised player outcomes to improve how relevant the suggestions are across different playing styles, skill levels and body types. No funding has been announced yet — this is a bootstrapped, early-days build.
We've covered this space before — Delhi Students Made an AI Music Video in 10 Days and India's First AI-Made Biopic Is Here — And It's About Sir Chhotu Ram.
Key Takeaways
- Tennis Buddy analyses stroke mechanics and match patterns to give coaching decisions, not just stats
- Founded by siblings Ranvijay Sawhney (15, national junior player) and Aryan Verma (23, CS graduate)
- Targets serious players who train regularly but lack access to professional coaching
- Founder-reported: 1,500+ waitlist sign-ups, 1 lakh+ launch video views
- Has pitched the Olympic Committee of India and is applying to accelerators; no funding announced yet
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Tennis Buddy?
Tennis Buddy is an AI-powered tennis coaching platform launched on September 19, 2026 by two siblings from New Delhi. It analyses a player's stroke mechanics and match patterns and delivers specific, actionable coaching instructions — not just performance statistics — so a junior player knows exactly what to change on the next serve.
Who founded Tennis Buddy?
The founders are Ranvijay Sawhney, a 15-year-old national junior circuit tennis player who lives the coaching-access problem daily, and his sibling Aryan Verma, a 23-year-old computer science graduate of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid with coursework at Purdue University and IIT Guwahati, who leads the engineering side.
What traction has Tennis Buddy seen so far?
The company says it has crossed 1,500 waitlist sign-ups and its launch video has over 1 lakh views. The founders have pitched members of the Olympic Committee of India and are applying to early-stage accelerators. No funding round has been announced yet.
What This Means for You
If you're a student or a young professional with a sport (or any passion) you know deeply — this is your sign that you don't need permission, a fat cheque, or a corner office to build something with AI. Two siblings, one of whom still has school in the morning, shipped a product and pitched the Olympic Committee of India. If you want to go down this road yourself, learning to actually direct AI systems — prompting, building agents, keeping costs sane — is the practical first step, and our GPT-6 Astra — Zero to Hero Guide takes you from zero to your first working build in about 30 days.
Confused by all the GPT-6 Astra buzz lately? We wrote a plain-English beginner's guide to GPT-6 Astra that is worth a read before you spend a single rupee on AI tools.