Swupnil Sahai and his co-founder serve an ace with AI-powered SwingVision

Although Swupnil Sahai didn’t step on the sacred clay at the French Open or the grass court at Wimbledon, he owes his livelihood to tennis – a passion he traces back to his childhood.

Raised in the Bay Area, the CEO and co-founder of SwingVision, the tennis performance tracking app – available only on the App Store – spent much of his time on the court. An early interest sparked by his father led Sahai to play on his high school tennis team, and eventually the sport served as a form of stress relief while attending the University of California, Berkeley.

While working as an engineer on a team that used 3D object tracking to refine autonomous driving, Sahai – a two-time WWDC scholar – had a revelation: The same techniques and principles he used at work could help him reach the next level. on the tennis court. However, the tools available in the market for tracking and analyzing his game were expensive, cumbersome and often difficult to obtain.

“Back then, you had a few companies making sensors that you could attach to your rackets, and they would track some data,” explains Sahai. “And in terms of using cameras, this 10-camera system that some high-end clubs had was the closest, but it cost about $10,000 per lane.”

When Apple Watch launched in April 2015, Sahai recognized the potential of a device that would bring intelligence directly to a user’s wrist. The seed for the idea that eventually became SwingVision started to sprout.

“That immediately stimulated my brain. I thought, ‘If I had a computer on my wrist, I could analyze my form and my strokes,’ he says, looking back at the first notes he took on his iPhone.

After teaching himself to code with Apple’s Swift programming language, Sahai enlisted the help of his college roommate and fellow tennis enthusiast, Richard Hsu. What started as a side project called Swing — released as an Apple Watch app in 2016 — eventually turned into a full-time venture, requiring a team that has since grown to 12 employees.

Sahai and Hsu then officially launched SwingVision on the App Store in November 2019, leveraging the power of Apple’s Neural Engine in iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, combined with the minds of advisors and investors such as Andy Roddick and James Blake. “That’s really been the big difference: the machine learning processing that’s possible,” he says.

The app recently launched a new feature that allows tennis enthusiasts to make calls with Apple Watch directly from their wrist off-court. “It almost pushes the boundaries of humanity because you can dial lines more accurately than you could with your own eyes,” says Sahai. “Everything we’ve been able to do in real-time video processing — gain instant insight so users can challenge line calls on the job on the job — wouldn’t be possible without the Neural Engine.”

The other big difference: the App Store, which put SwingVision in the spotlight as App of the Day in 2021 and immediately brought the app to the feeds of millions of customers.

“The App Store does a good job of exposing apps that are relevant to the customer and showcasing small apps, not necessarily just the big ones,” explains Sahai. “It was great for us to be listed as App of the Day, not only driving downloads on the day of, but also becoming a badge of approval that continues to build credibility in conversations with potential customers , investors and employees for several months afterwards.”

“The App Store provides a platform for small teams and even individuals to reach such a huge audience without spending a huge budget on marketing,” he continues. “The developers and app stories in the Today tab are especially powerful because they tell a deeper story that helps build branding, which is very difficult for a team of any size.”

Today, SwingVision has over 10,000 monthly users – with many more to come, thanks to ARKit, Apple’s augmented reality development framework for iOS and iPadOS mobile devices. Using ARKit, Sahai expects to be able to add graphics directly onto the pitch — an exciting prospect, he says, given the live streaming capabilities the company is currently working on to include it in the app.

He envisions a future where all tennis matches are live streamed by default, a future where parents who once had to miss their kids’ big games can tune in remotely, wherever they are, thanks to a well-placed iPhone or iPad with SwingVision. The device can send a video feed almost instantly without using too much battery or sacrificing quality.

For coaches and players, a major benefit that SwingVision offers is the ability to review and analyze a match recorded in the app shortly after it has ended on their favorite devices. Right now, SwingVision mainly sees growth in the college arena, Sahai says, with more than 30 Division I teams currently using the app and many others expected to come on board this summer.

The app is also starting to catch on with a certain segment of professionals seeking the higher echelons of the sport: “players outside the top 200 who don’t have the multi-million dollar contracts or coaches who can travel with them all the time,” explains Sahai.

“Pros usually have access to this data in matches they play at the stadium,” he adds, “but even if you’re a professional player like Serena Williams, the vast majority of your time is playing tennis on a practice pitch.”

The SwingVision team is also working on adding remote coaching to the app, opening up new possibilities that are not limited by the limitations of physical geography, especially for aspiring players living in countries where there are no top coaches around.

“This makes the development of tennis more accessible,” says Sahai, looking ahead to the future of the sport. “That’s always been a problem that people have seen: the idea that you need more money to play it. I think we can break that barrier.”