In India, where sporting infrastructure has been a perennial problem combined with the population, tennis has always been regarded as a rich man’s sport. After all, having access to a tennis court is not for the ordinary public and hiring a coach to teach the nuances of the game makes it quite an inaccessible sport to many. However, touchtennis is a wonderful alternative as a modified version of tennis played on a compact court with foam balls and shorter racquets. Not only does it solve the problem of space constraints but will soon become much more accessible in schools, events and housing societies.
In this exclusive interview with SPOGO, Mr. Prasad Kapre, CEO at touchtennis India speaks about the potential of the sport in the country, various initiatives planned by the organization, navigating the COVID-19 situation, overcoming challenges, future goals and more!
Q 1) As CEO of touchtennis India please share some insights on the popularity of the sport in the country, its growth and potential?
touchtennis is a very new sport and we have just launched the sport in India last year. Due to the pandemic we could not conduct many events but the activities we did in our base at Pune turned out to be successful as many people were interested and wanted to take up the sport. Once the educational institutions and offices are back, we are planning to organize school summer camps and hold league events with rankings for the adults in 2022. We are also planning to do demos in housing societies.
The game is ideal for Indian scenarios because we don't have many open areas and touchtennis does not take much space. We also lack sports facilities but the sport doesn't require specialized equipment so there is a lot of potential in the country for all age groups.
Q 2) What are the various initiatives that touchtennis India is undertaking to popularize the sport in the country?
The initiative which we have already planned is a school activation program once the schools in bigger cities start their offline class where we will give them demos. We will also start the after school program and summer school break activities as we are hoping that there won't be any more lockdowns. For the corporate employees, we will be focusing mainly on the women employees as now most of the organizations are trying to engage the women force towards health and sports. We feel that there is a lot of potential for women in the corporate sector and their participation will enhance the potential in the sport.
Q 3) What are some of your upcoming events planned in India? How are you navigating the COVID-19 situations to make them happen?
We are coordinating with schools now, as precautions we take necessary measures by sanitizing the rackets and courts but when we are in schools, we follow the school norms of social distancing, not having too many children on the court and many other things. We don’t have a specific safety protocol but tag along with the organization's health and safety protocols which we as a group tend to follow.
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Q 4) What are some of the challenges that you have faced as CEO of touchtennis India? How did you overcome them?
The first and foremost challenge we faced is that not too many Indians have played tennis per se, so tennis is a very new sport for a lot of people as they are wary of whether they can pick it up as a recreational sport or not. A lot of people tend to follow tennis and try to pick up the sport by watching it but not too many people have actually played the sport. The second challenge we faced is that touchtennis is a recreational sport. As of now there isn’t a career path or it is played professionally as many parents tend to ask us ‘what's the future for my son in this sport’ so these are some of the challenges we face. In my defence I would say this is the perfect sport for the age group of 6-12 to pick up the nuances of tennis as the playing time is more and you tend to develop the cognitive skills of tennis and if you're good at touchtennis then you will indirectly be good at tennis.
Q 5) Do you believe that touchtennis in India can become as popular as mainstream tennis one day? If yes, what needs to be done to make that happen?
We're not really competing with mainstream tennis as such. More than the popularity, we want participation. The idea is to make it a people's game. We want it to be a mass participative game for which we have a nice inbuilt system that is followed globally as touchtennis is very popular in Western Europe and North America. They have a very well developed league system and ranking games. We also have our own leaderboard because everybody wants to be seen and get that recognition. Everybody wants to unleash the Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal within them. The plan is to organise more and more events where people participate and there is a healthy competition but in a recreational way. You're not really playing for money but for the recognition and the bragging rights against your friends or colleagues. That is where we see it catching up with the young and middle age audience. The two things we are going to do in the next couple of years is the proliferation of our leagues and our ranking tournaments.
Q 6) What are your long term goals as CEO of touchtennis India? How do you plan to accomplish them?
The long term goal is to make sure that touchtennis reaches every corner of India in the next 10 years. The plan is to find the right partners once we develop a holistic business model around because right now we are doing everything like going to schools for demos, running training centers ourselves but as an organisation we have limitations and can only do certain things. I wouldn't call them franchises but they need to believe in touchtennis and that they can really work on it. We will empower them, dwell them and help them to grow touchtennis in their own area depending on their capacity. That is what we are concentrating on, to grow the sport.
