P. V. Sindhu

P. V. Sindhu has been an employee of Bharat Petroleum since July 2013. She joined their Hyderabad office as an assistant sports manager and was promoted to deputy sports manager after her silver-medal win at the Rio Olympics.

Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar presented her and two other Rio Olympic stars, Dipa Karmakar and Sakshi Malik, with BMW cars in 2016 following her silver medal win. The gifts were sponsored by former Andhra batsman V Chamundeshwarnath, who currently serves as the Hyderabad District Badminton Association president.

Pusarla Venkata Sindhu was born on July 5, 1995, in Hyderabad, India, to P. V. Ramana and P. Vijaya. Both her parents have been national level volleyball players. Her father, Ramana, who was a member of the Indian volleyball team that won the bronze medal in 1986 Seoul Asian Games, received the Arjuna Award in 2000 for his contribution to the sports.

She has an elder sister, P. V. Divya, who was a national-level handball player. However, she was not interested in pursuing professional sports and became a doctor. She later married US based software engineer, Anurag Kumar.

Sindhu was inspired by Pullela Gopichand's win in All England Badminton Championship in 2001 and became interested in badminton.

She started playing badminton at the age of six, and her father later started taking her to the badminton courts of Indian Railway Institute of Signal Engineering and Telecommunications in Secunderabad. As a seven-year-old, she could not play with senior players, but following the advice of renowned badminton coach Mehboob Ali, she would do wall practice till the paint on the wall peeled off.

In 2004, she came under the tutelage of Pullela Gopichand. Under Gopichand's guidance, she won the doubles title at the 5th Servo All India championship and the singles title at the Ambuja Cement All India tournament, playing in the under-10 category.

P. V. Sindhu got international recognition after she won a bronze medal at the 2009 Sub-Junior Asian Badminton Championships in Colombo. The very next year, she managed to claim the silver medal in the singles category at the 2010 Iran Fajr International Badminton Challenge.

At the 2010 Junior World Badminton Championships held in Mexico, she reached the quarterfinals. She was also part of the Indian national team at the 2010 Uber Cup.

She defeated Japanese Player Nozomi Okuhara 18–21, 21–17, 22–20 to win Asia Youth Under 19 Championship on July 7, 2012.

In the 2012 Li Ning China Masters Super Series tournament, she achieved a surprise win by defeating London 2012 Olympics gold medalist Li Xuerui of China by 21–19, 9–21, 21–16. However, in the semifinals, she lost to 4th seed Jiang Yanjiao of China by 10–21, 21–14, 19–21.

Despite her good performance in the China Open, she disappointed in the Japan Open, being defeated by Korean shuttler Bae Yeon Ju in the second round by 21–10, 12–21, 18–21. It was later revealed that she sustained a knee injury during the China Open, which affected her performance in the Japan Open.

P. V. Sindhu created history by becoming the youngest and first Indian woman to earn an Olympic Silver medal in 2016 Rio Olympics.

She was awarded the Arjuna Award for badminton in 2013. She also received the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award for badminton in 2016. These are the two prominent sports awards given in India.

In 2015, the Indian Government bestowed upon her the Padma Shri award. It is the fourth highest civilian honor awarded in India.

In 2014, she received the FICCI Breakthrough Sportsperson of the year award. The same year, NDTV named her the Indian of the Year 2014.