Pullela Gopichand

Pullela Gopichand is a well-known former Indian badminton player. He is the Chief Coach of the National Indian Badminton Team. He was born on 16 November 1973 in Nagandla, Andhra Pradesh. His father is Mr. Pullela Subash Chandra, and his mother is  Mrs. Pullela Subbaravamma. He studied at St. Paul High School, Hyderabad, and completed graduation in Public Administration from A.V College, Hyderabad. His wife is P.V.V Lakshmi, a fellow badminton player.

Pullela was encouraged by his elder brother to play badminton. S.M. Arif was his coach. Later, he joined Prakash Padukone Prakash Padukone is a badminton player by professi >> Read More... Academy, and Prakash Padukone, a former Indian badminton player, was his coach. In 1996, Pullela won the National Badminton Championship title and won this title 5 times in a row till 2000. Adding to his achievements, he won two gold and one silver medal in the national games at Imphal 1998, gold in the SAARC badminton tournament at Vijayawada, Silver in teams and bronze in Men's singles at 1998 Commonwealth Games 1998, Toulouse Open Championship at France in1999, Scottish Open Championship at Scotland in 1999, All England Open Badminton Championship at Birmingham, 2001.

In 2008, Pullela started his career as a coach after retiring from badminton with the foundation of Gopichand Badminton Academy by mortgaging his house. Nimmagadda Prasad, a famous industrialist, donated Rupees 50 million to the academy with the condition of getting an Olympic medal for India. Several famous players such as Saina Nehwal, Parupalli Kashyap, Srikant Kidambi, P.V Sindhu, Arundhati Pantawane, Arun Vishnu and Gurusai Dutt are from this academy. Among these players, Sindhu won a silver medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics, a bronze at the 2020 Summer Olympics, and a gold in the BWF World Championship. Pullela was also the coach at the 2016 Rio Olympics in Brazil.

Pullela was honored with several awards for his contribution to the sports. He received awards such as Arjuna Award (1999), Major Dhyan Chand Award (2001), Padma Shri (2005), Dronacharya Award (2009), and Padma Bhushan Award (2014). His academy has also received Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar in 2013. In 2021, Priya Kumar wrote a book Shuttler's Flick: Making Every Match Count, an autobiography of Pullela Gopichand. He was honored with a doctorate by IIT Kanpur on 52nd Convocation. In 2020, he launched a meditation session named Dhyana for Sports in the Dhyana App for athletes.