Jaideep Bhatia: Grooming the next Wimbledon Champ

Jaideep Bhatia is 34 years old and Director of Team Tennis National Programme and Marketing. Five years from now, he would like to be watching one of his students play at Wimbledon sitting in the players box. He decided to give up his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers for the love of the game.

He grew up on the tennis court and decided to change ball when it was time to choose a career. After netting an MBA, he joined PricewaterhouseCoopers. But his passion for the game got him back on the court. So, Jaideep and childhood pal Aditya decided to put their tennis training and started Team Tennis.

It is an academy that looks to shape tennis champions of the future. Today, Team Tennis has 36 centers including those in 11 schools across India and has a database of over 8,000 children.

So, in 2003 with the help of the former India Davis Cup player Shyam Minotra and his son Sanjay and Team Tennis began operations.

“The biggest challenge was to try and convince my immediate family that I wanted to give up close to a USD 1,00,000 job and come back and do something which is very unstructured. The sports industry in India is very unstructured at the moment. I won’t say that there is no support but there is very little support form the government for private entrepreneurs in sports. So, that was the challenge. Aditya and Sanjay were always associated with tennis more than I was as a kid. Aditya has played at the highest levels, Sanjay’s father being the Davis Cup player for India and also his main work being infrastructure. When I spoke to them from the US, it seemed that the tennis industry was languishing and there was not much going on. I asked them would this idea work of trying to get together and raising the standards, it was a gamble,” he said.

Breaking the myth that tennis is an elitist sport Team Tennis struck deals with schools, local clubs, community centers and local pubs across the country. High quality and low cost tennis programmes have helped them pocket large number of students.

“We wanted to break that myth. The only way we could do that was to tell children that just show up on the tennis court, everything else will be taken care off. Like for example-the mini tennis programe that we run in schools where we provide the equipments, rackets, balls and coaches. We charge as little as Rs 75 per month per child. That is very affordable for children and parents, especially to pay that amount and get an opportunity to learn,” he said.

The initial ride wasn’t smooth. They went without a salary for the first few months but kept the faith. Now, Team Tennis managed to spin together the business model that keeps the wheels going. So, money comes in through coaching subscriptions, camps and clinics, giving this duo an opportunity to do what they love.

He commented, “Basically, our collective goal at Team Tennis is to have tennis programmes all over the country, go into the small towns where people would have never dreamed that they would have an opportunity to play. Like for example-we are in Bhiwadi and Bhiwadi is an industrial town. We are running a tennis programme there on the first two tennis courts have come up. We have had close to about 30 children sign up which is very interesting for a very small place like that.”

“We have gone into far off places like Raipur in Chhattisgarh to do camps and clinics with them. We have gone in Mayo College in Ajmer. So, we don’t know where the next champion is going to come from and we have to be everywhere,” he stated.