Exclusive: “Sport Needs a Report Card”: How Former Tennis Star Chetan Desai Is Building India’s Digital Athlete Revolution

Chetan Desai has spent over six decades around tennis courts, first as a player and now as a mentor trying to reshape how athletes are developed in India.

A former player who reached a career-high ATP ranking of 310 and won gold at the 1985 National Games, Desai today finds himself focused less on trophies and more on technology. As he prepares for the launch of India's first gamified high-performance centre in Pune, his attention remains fixed on building a system where athletes no longer have to rely purely on instinct, memory or "feel" to improve.

For Desai, the biggest flaw in Indian sport has always been the absence of measurable feedback.

Coaching before technology

When Desai first entered competitive tennis, sports science and athlete tracking were practically non-existent in India. Improvement depended largely on the eye test and the memory of a coach.

"Everything was basically... the experience of whoever taught you the game," he says.

That subjectivity is what eventually pushed him towards building SportsSkill, a platform designed to bring performance tracking and structured athlete development into Indian grassroots sport.

"Is it possible for a trainer to keep detailed record of every single student over a long period? At least not mentally," Desai explains. "Let's say a student is learning to play tennis and needs to improve his swing. The coach may notice it... But can he remember the minute details of say 40 students of an academy? Not possible".

According to him, athletes often spent years training without fully understanding whether specific areas of their game were actually progressing.

The missing report card in Indian sport

The idea behind SportsSkill came from a comparison Desai could never ignore - the difference between academics and athletics.

"All students get report cards... how well or badly they are faring in all their subjects," he says. "But does any school give a report card on how the student is doing in his or her chosen sport? Unfortunately, no".

Desai believes parents investing heavily in their children's sporting ambitions are often left without clarity or measurable progress indicators.

"In sport, they're probably spending more money than what they're spending on education, but they're not really getting those kind of reports," he says. "A lot of parents... say, 'I really don't know what to do because I don't understand what's happening. I understand the game, but... we can't quantify it'".

That gap became the foundation for SportsSkill's athlete-tracking ecosystem.

Building a sports-tech startup before India was ready

Convincing people that sports performance data could become a viable business was not easy.

Desai says he and co-founder Abhinav Sinha pitched the concept to more than 50 investors before finding support.

"At that time, sports tech itself was not a big thing in the VC world," he recalls. "Earlier, funding would go into infrastructure or... gaming. Whereas what we are trying to do in the performance space, there was very limited understanding".

The challenge extended beyond investors. Many coaches were initially hesitant about integrating technology into their systems.

"A coach who typically manages 50-60 children does not know how to keep track of all their performances in one particular place," Desai explains.

Over time, however, the platform was positioned not as a replacement for coaches but as a tool to simplify their work and improve athlete development.

Chetan Desai wants to make elite tools accessible

One of Desai's strongest beliefs was that performance technology could not remain exclusive to elite academies.

Instead of creating a premium-only model, SportsSkill was intentionally priced at ₹300 per month to remain accessible.

"We wanted to democratize the entire process of teaching," he says.

Desai points to the story of 14-year-old squash player Vasundhara from Kallam as proof of what the platform can achieve.

"There were no squash courts... her and her friend landed up making a squash court, a ramshackle court, which still exists," he says. "The flooring on that court is literally nothing; it's terrible".

Despite the lack of infrastructure, Vasundhara stayed connected with coaches remotely through the platform by sharing videos and receiving technical feedback.

Within three years, she emerged as one of India's top squash prospects.

"When you see a success story like that... it has proven the validity and efficacy of what we are doing," Desai says.

What his generation never had

Desai often reflects on how differently athletes from his era would have developed with access to modern performance analysis.

"If I'm making any mistakes in my stroke production or in my fitness, then my coach would be able to immediately identify that weakness and begin immediately addressing that particular issue," he says.

He also believes earlier generations lacked awareness about several crucial aspects of athlete development beyond physical skill.

"Back then, 30-40 years back, we never heard of anything called mental conditioning," he explains. "Today mental conditioning forms as much a part of coaching as any other parameter. It's very important for any professional athlete".

Chetan Desai is taking the model global

While SportsSkill was built with Indian athletes in mind, Desai's ambitions are now expanding globally.

The company is targeting growth in the United States and Europe, with a long-term goal of reaching 50 million athletes within five years.

"The user base is very high out there and their ability, scope, understanding of tech, and also the willingness to pay for technology is a lot more," he says.

Even with those international ambitions, Desai's broader vision remains rooted in accessibility.

"Our goal is to make sure that the app gets more and more robust... so that every athlete, whether in a metro city or a remote village, can access advanced training tools, data-driven insights, and personalized coaching".

For Desai, the future of Indian sport may no longer depend solely on raw talent or instinct. It may increasingly depend on information, structure and the ability to measure progress - one data point at a time.