P. V. Sindhu (born 5 July 1995) is an Indian badminton player and one of the country’s most successful Olympians. She won silver at Rio 2016 and bronze at Tokyo 2020, becoming the first Indian woman to win two individual Olympic medals. In 2019 she became India’s first badminton world champion. She has won five World Championship medals in all, a joint record in women’s singles.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Pusarla Venkata Sindhu |
| Born | 5 July 1995, Hyderabad, India |
| Age | 31 |
| Sport | Badminton (women’s singles) |
| Highest ranking | World No. 2 (April 2017) |
| Olympic medals | Silver (Rio 2016), Bronze (Tokyo 2020) |
| World Championships | Gold (2019) and five medals in total |
| Parents | P. V. Ramana and P. Vijaya (both volleyball players) |
| Spouse | Venkata Datta Sai (m. 2024) |
Early Life
Sindhu was born in Hyderabad. Both her parents played volleyball at national level, and her father, P. V. Ramana, won the Arjuna Award. Inspired by Pullela Gopichand’s 2001 All England title, she took up badminton at eight and later trained at Gopichand’s academy.
Career
Sindhu broke into the top ranks as a teenager. She won bronze medals at the 2013 and 2014 World Championships, the first Indian woman to win a singles medal at the event.
At the 2016 Rio Olympics Sindhu reached the final and won silver after a three-game battle with Spain’s Carolina Marín. She won silver medals at the 2017 and 2018 World Championships and the 2018 BWF World Tour Finals title. In August 2019 in Basel she beat Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara in the final to become India’s first world champion in badminton.
Sindhu won bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, becoming the first Indian woman to win two individual Olympic medals. She won Commonwealth Games gold in Birmingham in 2022. She was India’s flag bearer at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where she lost in the round of 16, and she won the 2024 Syed Modi International title.
Personal Life
Sindhu married Venkata Datta Sai, a Hyderabad-based business executive, in December 2024 in Udaipur. She has appeared several times on Forbes‘ list of the world’s highest-paid female athletes.
Awards and Honours
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was P. V. Sindhu born?
P. V. Sindhu was born on 5 July 1995 in Hyderabad, India and is 31 years old.
Featured image: P. V. Sindhu with her Rio Olympic silver medal and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, August 2016. Photo by Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India, licensed under Government Open Data License – India, via Wikimedia Commons.
