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Pullela Gopichand Badminton Foundation is gearing up to expand its facilities, while setting up a Sports Science Centre and a Research and Development (R&D) Centre.
The Foundation, known to have played a major role in transforming the country’s badminton sport, has teamed up with Kotak Mahindra Bank to develop a world-class training facility and advanced infrastructure and create a platform to train coaches.
“As a part of this engagement with the Gopichand Academy, we will invest about ₹30-35 crore in upgradingfacilities at the academy. Apart from education, we are also looking at providing encouragement to sports,” Dipak Gupta, Joint Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, said.
Gupta explained that after focusing on education, the bank has begun engaging with different sports and this is one step towards that initiative. “We are also looking at some other sports to engage with and wrestling is top among our priorities,” he said.
Pullela Goipichand, the legendary Indian badminton player, coach and founder trustee of Pullela Gopichand Badminton Foundation, said, “The objective of the Foundation is to train, nurture and guide young talent with the purpose of developing international badminton champions. We will work together towards our shared vision of developing outstanding athletes and coaches.”
Gopichand said the programme entails construction of a high performance training centre comprising of six air-conditioned badminton courts in the premises at Gachibowli in Hyderabad, a Sports Science Centre and the upcoming new training centre.
The sports science centre will get top quality resident nutritionists, physiotherapists and conditioning experts on board for all round development of players and to ensure that the badminton coaching imparted by the academy is at par with global standards.
Gopichand said, “Unlike in some countries, where the progress of a sportsperson is mapped from his/her childhood, we do not have such facilities here. We hope to now create such a facility, where we can monitor their progress from their early stage through to their career.”
“Over the last 3-4 years, Badminton popularity has grown by leaps and bounds and now we have three players in top 10, and about 5-6 players in top 10. And this number will go up with better training facilities and quality coaches. We do not have training facilities for coaches and we plan to bridge that demand,” he said.
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