01
Neyveli
gave me mine.
Big dreams don’t need big cities. Neyveli gave me mine, and I have spent every year since chasing them down with a stubbornness that borders on faith, persistent and determination. There is Kodava blood in me, drawn from my father’s side in Kakkabe, Coorg, and it is that bloodline, I believe, that taught me to fight even when the odds refused to make sense. My mother, hailing from an academically accomplished family in Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, chose an athletic path as well and excelled as a national-level basketball player. My father was a decathlon athlete and later picked up a tennis racket at zero, no training, no background, nothing, simply so his sons would not have to start at zero too. My mother made certain the road never ran out beneath me. And my brother Kushalappa, seven years older, was never really a brother at all. He was a second father, the kind who crosses continents just to watch you walk out onto a Grand Slam court for the first time, because that is what he does. He shows up.
02
The year it nearly ended
That is where this story begins, in a small South Indian town called Neyveli that most maps barely register, and in the quiet, complete confidence of parents who chose faith over caution. My parents sacrificed their energy, their desires, their needs, and even their lands. It wasn’t just for one dream but two, and they never once said no to either of us. And yet, there came a year. I was twenty, after training two years in Spain, when none of that was enough to soften what came. I found myself broke, training alone, no real setup to speak of, I was staring down the hardest stretch of my career when Rohan Bopanna did something I could not do for myself. He opened a door. What followed was two national titles, a South Asian Games gold medal, a steady place to train and improve my skills. But Rohan’s impact went way beyond my own career. Thanks to him, the broader dream for Indian doubles finally took shape. He helped build a real infrastructure around us, supporting the country’s top doubles players with a proper physio and a dedicated coach to guide us and ensure we were always performing at our absolute best, and now he is doing the same for the singles.
03
Borna Bikic & the tricolour
Then came Borna Bikic, a transformative mentor who took me under his wing and fundamentally reshaped my trajectory. He altered my mindset, overhauled my approach to the game, and sparked a true professional evolution. This transformation ultimately paved the way to Islamabad and my Davis Cup debut for India; absolutely nothing in my career compares to the profound pride of that first victory, competing with the tricolour emblazoned on my chest. Though I was initially excelling on the singles circuit, subsequent challenges eventually necessitated a strategic shift toward doubles. Rather than letting this compromise my ambitions, I channeled a deeper determination into this new chapter, pivoting my goals to successfully break into the ATP doubles top 100.
04
No. 180, and back
But careers are rarely straight lines, and mine folded in on itself in 2025. A racket switch that should have been routine became a crisis. Stress I carried without telling anyone. I fell to No. 180, watching the rankings scroll instead of watching my own game. It took two weeks, just two, training under coach Borna Bikic in Croatia to put me back together. I fought into the top 86. I made my Grand Slam main draw debut at the Australian Open 2026.
05
Not finished
I am not finished. There is an Asian Games medal out there with my name not yet on it, an Olympic medal I intend to win. There are so many more days ahead of me wearing the tricolour, competing on the ATP Tour, and standing on the courts of Grand Slams. When those moments come, every single one of them will belong to the people who never once stopped believing I would get here.
Created on 14th August 2026.