India 2025 – For many young athletes growing up in small towns across the country, passion for sports is rarely the problem. The real challenge is access to trained coaches, credible scouting systems, reliable feedback, and pathways that connect raw talent with real opportunity. This is a hurdle that countless promising players face in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, which are India’s smaller and less developed urban centers These cities often lack the infrastructure, investment, and sporting ecosystems creating an environment where potential frequently surpasses the support available to help it grow.

For Aadish Abhijeet Shelke and Bhagyashri Heeralal Meena, co-founders of NextPlayAI, this challenge was not an abstract research topic. It was lived reality. Both grew up playing sports and repeatedly saw gifted teammates lose momentum simply because there was no way for them to get noticed or to understand what they needed to improve. The two founders watched many dreams fade not for lack of ability, but because of a gap in access that felt unfair and unnecessary. NextPlayAI was born from the belief that the right technology applied thoughtfully could become the equalizer India’s young athletes have long needed.

Using AI to Build the Future of Athletic Discovery

NextPlayAI is a platform designed to make sports participation more inclusive by ensuring that even athletes far from urban hubs can showcase their performance to scouts, academies, and tournament organizers. The system uses automated analytics drawn from video footage and, optionally, wearable data to generate objective performance metrics. Athletes receive clear, data driven insights into their development areas. Since many young players do not have regular access to trained coaches, this objectivity is crucial.

Alongside athlete tools, the platform includes a Scout Portal that gives coaches and talent evaluators an easy way to view profiles, compare analytics, and track potential recruits. This feature opens a channel of continuous, remote talent identification, something India’s diverse and expansive sporting ecosystem has long lacked. While Aadish and Bhagyashri are currently focused on strengthening this foundation of NextPlayAI, they also envision future features that extend the platform’s inclusivity.

A Transformative Journey Through Samsung Solve for Tomorrow

Participating in Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow program marked a turning point for the NextPlayAI team. What began as an ambitious concept gained structure, direction, and a sharper focus. Through design thinking sessions and expert mentorship, Aadish and Bhagyashri were pushed to refine their prototype, streamline their user journey, and make every feature more testable and purposeful. One of the biggest shifts came from learning to prioritize "evidence-first features." The team learned to identify what scouts and athletes truly require and improve usability. The program also strengthened their ability to communicate what their product does and why it matters.

Lessons from mentors: framing problems and prioritizing impact

From Samsung’s mentors and the design thinking workshop, two lessons made a lasting impression on the team. The first was the importance of framing the problem correctly. Through the empathize, define, ideate process, they learned to look beyond surface-level assumptions and understand what users genuinely experience. Using SCAMPER techniques, they were able to simplify complex ideas, and create solutions that were more intuitive, effective, and easier to test in early pilots. The second major lesson was the discipline of prioritization. With guidance from mentors, they learned to concentrate on features that deliver immediate, verifiable value. These insights continue to shape their decisions as they move toward real-world deployment.

A vision for India’s undiscovered athletes

The impact that NextPlayAI hopes to create is both simple and profound: to level the playing field. The platform opens doors to the athletes that were previously out of reach. Through the Scout Portal, players can become discoverable to academies across the country. High-potential athletes will no longer be limited to the visibility of their local tournaments or school-level competitions.

Automated analytics provide a consistent source of feedback. With objective data in hand, they can track improvement, understand skill gaps, and prepare for trials with more confidence. NextPlayAI also supports long-term development rather than short-lived discovery. The founders believe that the future of Indian sport depends on democratizing talent identification. When opportunity is tied to performance rather than geography or privilege, India’s sporting landscape becomes more inclusive, more vibrant, and more competitive.

The Next Stage of NextPlayAI What comes next

Building on their progress so far, Aadish and Bhagyashri plan to expand their team by bringing on machine learning specialists, engineers, and product experts who can refine model accuracy and improve platform scalability. As they gather more diverse training data, they aim to make their performance analytics more robust across various sports and player profiles.

NextPlayAI’s journey reflects a wider truth: when innovation is rooted in lived experience and built with empathy, it can reshape systems that once felt unchangeable. Through their technology, Aadish and Bhagyashri are not just building a platform; they are building possibilities one athlete, one opportunity, and one data point at a time.

About Samsung Solve for Tomorrow

Samsung Solve for Tomorrow is a global competition that empowers students to address real-world challenges in their communities through STEM. By fostering creativity and critical thinking, the program encourages students to innovate and develop impactful solutions to local and global issues.

Through hands-on projects, participants gain the skills and confidence to tackle complex problems, transforming their ideas into actionable solutions. The program nurtures the next generation of leaders while strengthening the global community by connecting young minds across borders to share knowledge and inspire collective progress.

To learn more, visit https://csr.samsung.com/en/program/samsung-solve-for-tomorrow