HYDERABAD: The Pullela Gopichand Badminton Foundation (PGBF) has agreed to a new partnership with Kotak Mahindra Bank, one of India’s leading private sector banks for the upgrading of the Gopichand Academy in the city, The Hindu BusinessLine reports.
The academy is set to build a specialist, world-class Sports Science centre and a Research and Development (R&D) facility aiding athletes in training. The centre will rope in resident nutritionists, physiotherapists and conditioning experts for the holistic development of players with world-class coaching standards. It will also help in creating the infrastructure for top-quality trainer programmes.
The funding will be essential in building six new air-conditioned badminton courts at the main premises in Gachibowli, Hyderabad.
“As a part of this engagement with the Gopichand Academy, we will invest about ₹30-35 crore in upgrading facilities at the academy. Apart from education, we are also looking at providing encouragement to sports,” Kotak Mahindra Bank Joint MD Dipak Gupta told the newspaper.
“We are also looking at some other sports to engage with and wrestling is top among our priorities.
“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 added.
“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 signed off.
