NextPlayAI developed by IIIT Pune student duo will soon make Tennis training more accessible

Aadish Shelke from Aurangabad and Bhagyashri Meena from Mumbai — both 21-year-old tennis players and Computer Science students at IIIT Pune — have developed NextPlayAI, a platform that analyses tennis videos using machine learning to offer personalised feedback on strokes, footwork and match movements. The aim: to help budding tennis players from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities access guidance that usually requires expensive academies and elite coaches.
The duo’s innovation earned them a Samsung Solve for Tomorrow grant under the category Social Change through Sport and Technology. The platform is part of Samsung’s flagship education programme that supports youth-led tech solutions for real-world challenges. This year, four winning teams received ₹1 crore incubation support at IIT Delhi to scale their ideas.
Shelke said the idea emerged from the reality that tennis remains concentrated in a few urban pockets. “Tennis coaching often feels like a luxury,” he said. “In a city like Aurangabad, high-quality infrastructure and expert coaching are extremely limited. Many promising players drop out because they can’t get the right support at the right time.”
NextPlayAI helps players record their practice sessions and compare them with professional benchmarks — from serve mechanics to racket angles and on-court movement. Meena said the goal is to make tennis learning affordable and accessible. “There is so much valuable footage and data on elite players. We wanted to bring that intelligence to young athletes everywhere, especially those outside big metros,” she said.
Through the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow mentorship, the team refined their approach using design thinking to ensure the tool adapts to different learning styles. “Every tennis player has a unique rhythm and technique,” Shelke said. “The AI has to recognise individuality, not force uniformity.”
The duo now plans to collaborate with district sports associations and tennis academies to pilot the platform across smaller towns. They also want to build a team of developers and players from similar backgrounds — those who know firsthand the challenges of pursuing tennis from outside the mainstream circuit.
“We want to see more tennis champions emerge from places people don’t expect,” Meena said. “Talent exists everywhere — opportunity must too.”