INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A 9-year-old is smashing the shuttle far and wide, frantically pacing back and forth on the court in Bangalore, India, as her competition
She is playing against a machine that is mimicking the game of badminton legend P.V
Sindhu, toned down a few notches to adjust for the age difference.By the court, her father, Jayanth Kolla, is watching the game and taking
Kolla is a familiar name in the tech startup and business ecosystem in India
For the last eight years, he has been helming the research firm Convergence Catalyst, which covers mobility, telecom, AI and IoT.When his
daughter showed interest in badminton, Kolla rushed to explore options, only to realize that the centuries old sports could use some deep
tech.He reached out to a few friends to explore if they could build a device
interview.Months later, they had something better.Sensate TechnologiesKolla founded Sensate Technologies last year and has hired many
Sensate is building solutions on deep technologies such as AI, ML, advanced analytics, IoT, robotics and blockchain.In the last year, the
bootstrapped startup has developed seven prototypes, five of which are for sports
In a recent interview, he demonstrated how Sensate was able to accurately map how a player moves on the court and goes about smashing the
shuttle by just looking at two-dimensional videos on YouTube and a mobile camera feed
This has been built using Computer Vision AI.It then fine tunes the gameplay in accordance with the age difference, which is input into a
machine that can now mimic that player to a great level, said Kolla.A handful of startups and established players have sought to address the
sports tech market in recent years
SeeHow, another India-based startup, builds and embeds sensors in bats and balls to track specific types of data that batsmen and bowlers
company Spektacom to work on a number of solutions including a smart sticker for bats that contains sensor tech designed to track the
solutions on these technologies to solve a problem in a particular sector and with very little incremental effort, they can solve problems
