Born on a cracked Mumbai court.
Kourtz started the way most Indian pickleball stories do: borrowed paddles, booked-out courts, and imported gear that treated India as an afterthought. This is what we did about it.
The last straw
We were the players you see on every Indian court at 7 AM: obsessed, improving, and spending real money on imported paddles that were never designed with us in mind. They arrived after weeks, cost a duty-loaded fortune, and came with warranties that lived on another continent.
Then the monsoon did what the monsoon does.
The third time a ₹25,000 import delaminated on us in August, we stopped blaming bad luck. Paddles weren't failing us. They were failing India.
The Kourtz founding team · Mumbai, 2024
Two years of breaking paddles on purpose
We made India the design brief. Cores were drop-tested in monsoon humidity. Faces were left in parked cars through May. Prototypes went out to club players who hit harder than we do, and came back with notes we didn't always enjoy reading.
Most of what we built didn't survive. That was the point.
- 38
- prototypes
- 12
- partner courts
- 3
- cities
- 1
- standard: would we play it?
Thirty-eight prototypes. Two made the cut.
The Apex Pro Gen-3: raw T700 carbon, foam-injected and thermoformed, for players who want the fight. The Alpha: big-hearted, honest, and built to carry your whole first year.
Everything else broke so these wouldn't.
On the courts you'll play on.
Real Indian conditions: humidity, heat, and the hard concrete most clubs run on.
