Trailblazing Women: How Former Tennis Champion Sania Mirza is Serving Her On-Court Excellence in Entrepreneurship Mirza will perhaps forever be regarded as one of the greatest sportspersons that India, and indeed the world, has ever seen. Post retirement, she now hopes to extend the same excellence and caliber to her entrepreneurial pursuits in the UAE and beyond.

This article is part of a series entitled "Trailblazing Women" by Entrepreneur Middle East, in celebration of International Women's Day 2025.

There is a phrase that often closely trails the name Sania Mirza: "the first Indian woman to…" Indeed, the tennis star holds the title of being the first Indian woman to achieve the following: win a Grand Slam title, courtesy her Australian Open mixed doubles win in 2009 alongside fellow Indian ace Mahesh Bhupathi; win a women's doubles Grand Slam title at the 2015 Wimbledon with Martina Hingis; and compete in four Olympics between 2008 and 2020. In 2015, she also became the first Indian woman to be ranked world number one in world tennis doubles. The list goes on and on. And so the first question I ask Mirza, when I meet her backstage after her talk at the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival (SEF) 2025, is which of those "firsts" has been dearest to her. "To be very honest, I think all of them…it's very hard for me to say this one meant the most because I feel that at that given point of time in my life that was the most special moment that was happening," she says. "Obviously, as you keep achieving more , the magnitude of those firsts start becoming bigger and the amount of people who start noticing them becomes a lot more too. But I feel like every single one has a special place in my heart!"

Now, to many, the idea of being a pathbreaker like Mirza might seem enticing and exhilarating. And while Mirza doesn't dismiss that all those emotions come with it, she also blatantly notes that being "the first" in any capacity or career can often be extremely lonely. While addressing the eagerly tuned-in audience on the second day of SEF 2025, Mirza said that "being the first to do something is always the hardest." "There is no path to follow and no precedent, but overcoming those challenges is what makes you shine," she had added.

^{Martina Hingis of Switzerland and Sania Mirza after winning the doubles final match at the Australian Open 2016. Mirza became the first Indian female tennis player to win a women's doubles Grand Slam title at the 2015 Wimbledon with Hingis. Image source: Shutterstock}

Back in the quiet media lounge where I get to talk with her, she tells me that the key to overcoming loneliness and mental slumps is to keep reevaluating one's intentions and goals after every result. "I think the most important thing is that you have to be 'real,'" she says. "You have to fully accept what you're trying to do, who you are, and what your goals are- and keep revisiting those depending on the success ratio that you're having. Because it's also very important to be realistic in life. You can't say "it doesn't matter if I can't play but I want to be number one in the world!" It doesn't work that way in sport, for example. So it's the same thing in any other business as well, and I can say that with experience. So if I don't think I am good at something that I've picked up, I will try to find other ways or I will surround myself with people who know better than me."

Despite the sports analogies, it is hard to miss that Mirza's advice will resonate strongly with startup founders as well. After all, the dangers of being in echo chambers and not pivoting at the right time are both topics that are often brought up in the entrepreneurial world, and Mirza's tip to surround oneself with people with different views is something that entrepreneurs will certainly benefit from.

^{Former world tennis champion Sania Mirza during her fireside chat on the second day of the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival 2025. Image source: BNC Publishing}

For Mirza herself, who started playing tennis at the age of just six, the people who've known "better" have always been her immediate family. As she explains the foundations of her childhood goals, she also cautions both sportspeople and entrepreneurs to not be solely money-driven. "The most important thing is to believe and know why you started what you did," Mirza shares. "So when we started playing tennis -and by "we" I mean my family and I- we didn't start on this path to be doing interviews, or to walk the red carpets or do photoshoots. We started because we love tennis, because we love sport, and for the simple reason that my parents wanted their children to play a sport. The dream was seen from there. The seed that was in us was simply that- that we love tennis, we will try to be as successful as we possibly can be, and be the best version of ourselves. So the perseverance, the resilience, the commitment and sacrifices that have come with this journey- all of it seems worth it when you remember that dream and the beginning of the dream- and not because of the money, fame and everything that comes with it."

But all of this isn't to say that seeking profitability is inherently wrong either, reminds the tennis star. "I'm not saying you can't want that, but that's also not what you dream for," she adds. "Money and fame are just something that happens to come with working towards your goals; it's just a by-product of it."

There is a certain added weight when such advice comes from an athlete who not only has over 20 years of professional tennis experience and six Grand Slam titles under her belt, but has also beaten significant odds in reaching the pinnacle of her career. Earlier that same day on the SEF 2025 stage, Mirza spoke of how ludicrous her dream had seemed to most people when she first began playing the sport. "When I started 30 years ago, we just had a history of cricketers in my city, Hyderabad," she had shared. "When a young girl said to her parents that she wanted to play at Wimbledon, people thought it was a joke, and crazy to have a dream like that."

^{Image source: Shutterstock}

But as is the story of all sportspersons, Mirza had to eventually choose the right time to bow out of tennis. That came in early 2023 -coincidentally in the UAE, at the Dubai Tennis Championships in February that year- and with it came the opportunity for her to step out of the court and into the world of entrepreneurship. Having already opened a few tennis academies in her hometown in India, Mirza opened the Sania Mirza Tennis Academy (SMTA) in Dubai in September 2022, just a few months prior to her retirement. Offering tennis training and coaching to aspiring players of all ages and skill levels, the academy has a number of branches across the emirate today. In December 2023, in collaboration with the Dubai Sports Council and the UAE Tennis Federation, SMTA also launched the Dubai Open for Tennis Academies (DOTA) Tournament. Bringing together over 200 players from 40 academies, the event aims to support tennis talent in the region.

Describing her entrepreneurial ventures as "another dream", Mirza tells me that while being an athlete allows her to bring in the obvious traits of discipline and resilience into the world of business, it has also given her another advantage (tennis pun intended!): time. "I never really had the time to do anything else outside of playing tennis until 2023," she says. "February 2023 was the last match that I played. After that is when I finally started getting into other stuff. But then people used to tell me, "Oh, you're so young!", and I was like "Yeah, in tennis years I'm a dinosaur!" [laughs] But that's the great part about being an athlete- that you can finish your entire career and still be young enough to start new ones. And that's the opportunity I wanted to use."

^{Image source: BNC Publishing}

Mirza's entrepreneurial pursuits haven't been restricted to tennis-related businesses either. In January this year, she collaborated with SeeSaw Spaces, a Hyderabad-based children's center that focuses on overall child development. Offering a three-pronged set of services including creative play zones, fitness programs, as well as a family cafe, the venture has been yet another feather added to Mirza's entrepreneurial hat- and one that she has felt personally connected to as a parent herself. "SeeSaw is something I really relate to," she says. "It's a kids' space in Hyderabad. But we try to educate kids there as well- it's not just a "come, play, jump and go" area- it's much more than that. It's like a holistic place for them, and that's something that being a mother I really relate to. So I also get into things that I feel a complete bond with. And, well, the tennis academies I have an obvious connection with too!"

During her fireside chat, one line Mirza said stood out to me- purely because it displayed a healthy level of detachment from career feats and fame. "I would not say tennis is everything to me, but it means a lot to me," she had said during her fireside chat.

^{Sania Mirza and Aalia Mehreen Ahmed, Features Editor of Entrepreneur Middle East, at SEF 2025. Image source: BNC Publishing}

As such, I am tempted to end this story with the assumption that it is the same mindset that prompts her to mention how the lesser known achievements of her tennis years are just as important as any of the popular "firsts" that are attached to her name. "The obvious ones of becoming number one in the world, winning the Grand Slam… I mean, those are stuff that are out there for everybody to see and find on Google," she tells me. "But the personal firsts are the ones that have happened when I was very young. I was the first one to win Nationals when I was 12, at the Under-14 and then the Under-16 categories. So stuff like that, which is not really out there in the world, are just as special."

For the entrepreneurs reading this, there is perhaps a golden nugget of wisdom to take away from this statement: that achievements, no matter how small or unknown, are just as significant as the more prominent milestones. Or as Mirza more aptly puts it, "You have to do everything in your power to give yourself the opportunity to succeed, no matter what you do."

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