Tennibot: Interview with the CEO & Founder Haitham Eletrabi

We had the privilege of interviewing Haitham Eletrabi, the CEO and founder of Tennibot. Tennibot began its journey with an autonomous tennis ball collector, designed to help players maximize their time on the court. Over the years, they’ve expanded into padel and pickleball, and last year, they introduced The Partner, a tennis-playing partner robot. With even more innovative products in the pipeline, Tennibot is redefining sports technology.

In our conversation, Haitham shared the story behind Tennibot, the challenges of navigating the Sportainment sector, and his entrepreneurial insights. Whether you’re passionate about sports technologies or an entrepreneur seeking inspiration, Haitham offers valuable perspectives for everyone.

Check out the full interview below or listen on YouTube!

Introduction

In this interview, we’d like to clarify a couple of key points first. Tennibot produces autonomous rovers designed to collect balls on tennis, padel, and pickleball courts efficiently. Meanwhile, the Tennibot Partner is an automated, human-like machine that moves across the court and throws balls to you for practice. You can find pictures of both products below.

Interview with Haitham Eletrabi

Welcome to Topgolf.Club podcast, the show where we explore the business of sports entertainment and technology, and and today we are diving into the fascinating world of robotics and sports.

This episode is brought to you by Sportainment Consulting your partner for business plans, feasibility studies and strategies at the intersection of sports entertainment and technology.

Joining us today is Haitham Eletrabi, the founder and CEO of Tennibot. Tennibot is a groundbreaking company that’s revolutionizing the way we experience tennis, pickleball, and padel. Tennibot’s autonomous rovers collect balls on the court, saving players time and effort while enhancing the overall experience.

Haitham is here to share the story behind Tennibot, the challenges of creating sports robotics, and his vision for the future. So whether you’re a tech enthusiast, sports fan, or entrepreneur looking for inspiration, you’re in for an exciting conversation. Let’s jump in.

Topgolf.Club

Well, thank you, Haitham for joining us today.

Thanks for having me, and I appreciate Thank you.

Topgolf.Club

For the viewers and listeners, Tennibot is basically—though Haitham can explain much better—an autonomous tennis ball retriever.

The idea actually came from pure frustration. I played tennis a bit as a kid, got back into it as an adult, and I love the sport—but I’ve always hated collecting tennis balls. Whether it was practicing with a ball machine, working on my serve, or hitting with a coach, I felt like I had a limited amount of time to spend on the court.

One day, while using the ball machine at the tennis center, I reached my breaking point. I realized I was spending more time picking up balls than actually hitting them, and it just didn’t make sense. I couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to buy something that matched what I was envisioning, but nothing on the market fit the bill. That’s when I started tinkering with a prototype for myself, something to make the experience more efficient—and that’s how Tennibot was born.

Topgolf.Club

Oh, that’s an amazing story.

Shortly after that, I pitched the idea to my co-founder. He was finishing up his master’s in robotics, and we hit it off. We started basically working whenever we had time. Whenever we weren’t working on that, we were out playing tennis or table tennis. So, it was at his house, and people were like, “This product is okay.” Then we did a Kickstarter. We reached our goal in a couple of hours. The goal of the campaign was reached by the end of the night. So, everything started with just being lazy people.

Topgolf.Club

That sounds great. I’m also playing tennis from time to time and understand what you mean about the trouble of collecting the balls every time, especially at the tennis courts where you pay. You don’t want to waste your precious time collecting the balls while playing with your partner or whoever.

You have a background as a structural engineer with a Ph.D. How did your education and experiences influence your approach to developing Tennibot?

So, for the rover, going forward, we wanted to make a product that required the least amount of work for the users—for the tennis players or the coaches. Having a tennis background allowed me to take a common-sense approach to envisioning the final product. Tennibot wasn’t just created from the perspective of an inventor—it was designed from the standpoint of a user and a player, understanding firsthand what the experience needed to improve.

So you’re kind of trying to balance out the engineering demands and the complexity, but also you’re thinking about it from the user side. How would this work? How simple is it? What do we need to do to make it more convenient? What kinds of courts should it be able to handle? So being able to combine those two played a big role.

And this is our first product example, and then our latest product is the same concept, which is the Tennibot Partner. This is one that shoots balls like a smart ball machine.

Also, we’re thinking, well, from a player’s standpoint, I played with so many ball machines throughout my life, and they all had limitations—whether they couldn’t move, were hooked up to a cable, or didn’t see where I was. And this is why the Partner was born. We wanted to solve those problems for those players while still having a compact, portable robot that could fit in your car comfortably, no matter what you’re driving.

Topgolf.Club

Another question would be, what were the biggest challenges when you were developing the robot? Was it the cost, the technology, your approach, or something else that you hadn’t thought of? Stuff that you’re not thinking about when you start, but later on, when you’re developing it, you realize, “Okay, that will be a pain point in the whole production.”

Great question. To be honest, we obviously tried to make it as easy and user-friendly as possible for the user. But on the back end, it’s a fairly complex product.

You’re basically building an autonomous vehicle—an outdoor autonomous vehicle. The only difference between this and a car is that a car goes 60 miles an hour. This one is much safer, and there’s no risk of human fatality, unlike a car.

But in the sense that it’s autonomously moving on the court, protecting humans, avoiding obstacles, looking for balls, autonomously picking them up, handling clay, grass, and hard court surfaces, and being able to work indoors, outdoors, in different lighting conditions, and with different ball conditions—all of this had to be done effortlessly.

From a user standpoint, it was fairly complicated and complex, but we approached one problem at a time.

The first problem: how to pick up the balls.
The second problem: how to pick up the balls at scale—like picking up one or two balls is one thing, but picking up 400, 500, or even up to 1,000 balls per session is another. It depends. I mean, obviously, some people even play more than this, but the average user probably has 1,000 balls before they run out of juice. Gathering up those balls quickly, easily, and effortlessly was the goal.

And then, after that, how can it navigate autonomously on the court without being confused by your tennis bag or another human? And then after that, how do we deal with edge cases like the fence or the net while staying in solid communication with the station and your phone? How do we convey its location to the user comfortably and quickly without making the user have to take a lot of steps?

We kept going at it step by step. That’s why, as this was our first time building anything hardware-related, it took us a lot of time. We were a small team, but very focused on it. It took us about five years to get from inception to the rover.

But then we used all this knowledge, and it took us only five months to go from Tennibot Partner ideation to having a production prototype. And we’re going to start shipping it in April.

So you start using all that knowledge and lessons to move significantly quicker for our next project. We keep joking with the team about how long the next product will take and whether it can take even less time than the last one.

Topgolf.Club

Yeah, interesting, by the way. You mentioned just before. But before we proceed to the business and market strategy. I wanted to talk about the technology and innovation a little bit more.

The way I understand it, Tennibot was the first product—a rover that collects balls—and then you guys extended it to other racket sports, like padel and pickleball. Naturally, it makes sense to expand the concept to other sports.

But the question is actually, did you need to make some adjustments to the technology, or does it work exactly the same way? Sure, because they’re similar sports with balls, you can just catch the ball, and then the rover stores it in its storage. But for the Tennibot Partner, it’s slightly different because it shoots balls at high speed, being a ball machine.

So for the Partner, the padel and tennis versions are the same, just because the difference in the balls is very small. For pickleball, it’s slightly different. From a hardware perspective, we had to adjust the hardware dimensions because the size of the pickleball is significantly larger. It’s plastic, unlike the other materials, so you need to handle it differently, but it’s still fairly close.

But still, you get a different ball machine for pickleball, basically because it shoots balls at a different speed, and the dynamic physical conditions of the ball are different. But for tennis and padel, they use the same machine.

And the reason we got into those markets is customer demand—we keep getting feedback all the time. That approach worked for the rover. So this time, when we designed the Partner, we made sure it worked for those sports as well.

Topgolf.Club

Yeah. I mean, pickleball especially is one of the fastest-growing sports in North America, so that totally makes sense. I also wanted to talk about the Partner that you mentioned.

For the listeners, the Partner is a ball machine that moves like a human. When I first saw the Partner—and I obviously first saw the Tennibots in an ad—then I went to your website, and I saw, okay, they have another product called the Partner.

I really love the idea because I think, first of all, it’s a really, really good training partner. You don’t need an actual human to throw balls, and you can basically spend hours on the court working on your forehand, backhand, or whatever. So I think that idea is extremely well thought out.

Actually, can you also explain the timeline a little bit? When did the Tennibot come out, and when did the Partner come out? And when did pickleball and padel come into play? What was the timeline for the company?

Sure. For the rover, we worked on it for a couple of years, prototyping and tinkering with the idea before we started actually going out. I mean, obviously, there were some events and conferences like CES and stuff like that, but 2020 was when it had its latest physical shape.

The Partner was released in November last year (2024), so only two months ago or so. When we announced the Partner, we had already worked on it for five months before going public with it. Then we went public. This was the production prototype, and the plan is to ship the Partner in April. That will be a significantly quick turnaround time, but we are intentionally pushing for it.

We planned it accordingly, and the Partner works like the version that will be released in April. People will be able to get the tennis, padel, and pickleball versions—all three. Obviously, it’s the same robot for padel and tennis, with a slightly different robot for pickleball.

Topgolf.Club

Yeah, that’s great. And the last question about the technology and innovation part.

How do you see robotics evolving in sports over the next decade? We are in 2025 now, so by 2035, do you see robotics becoming more involved in sports? Also, are there any new products you’re developing for other sports, or are you staying focused on pickleball, padel, and tennis for now?

Let’s start with the second question. We have a couple of products in the pipeline, but nothing ready to announce yet. We’ll explain more when the time comes, so stay tuned on that one.

For the first part of the question—yeah, I think you’re going to start seeing more and more robotics in sports, especially with the reception we’ve been seeing for Tennibot and from other companies building solutions for football, soccer, and similar sports. There’s a growing excitement around it.

You’ll start seeing how robotics can augment a lot of other sports, whether it’s practice, court maintenance, or improving player performance. For example, one of the accessories we started offering with the rover was a court sweeper attachment.

It’s an attachment that connects to the back of the court rover and moves around the court to sweep it for you.

Topgolf.Club

So this is something for clay courts?

It’s for clay, but it can also handle leaves on hard courts. Basically, it was designed for clay courts because a lot of clubs don’t want to waste their precious labor time. They don’t want their equipment manager or tennis coaches sweeping courts, and players are always in a hurry to leave the courts after a match, whether they won or lost.

So this kind of court maintenance solution is becoming more common, not just in racket sports but also in general sports. For example, a startup called Grind Basketball, out of Texas, has this basketball retriever. When you shoot the ball, it falls into the machine, and the machine throws it back to you. The idea is to enhance your training.

You’ll start seeing similar innovations in other sports. I think these solutions will become more common, especially as the price points decrease. More people will start using robotics to maximize their limited time, improve their experience, and for facilities to offer better services to their players.

Topgolf.Club

That totally makes sense. I’ve also seen a lot of lawn mower mobile robots for golf courses. Maybe someday, collecting balls with rovers might be possible for golf courses too, even though it’s a much larger area.

Now, let’s move on to our next chapter, which is business and market strategy. You already mentioned the price point a little bit. Robots and automated systems are often expensive for individuals.

Who is your target audience for Tennibot, and how do you plan to expand your reach? Who are your regular customers? Are they only tennis clubs, or do professionals also ask about it?

Great question. Our target customer base is broken into two segments. The B2C segment includes individuals, players, and folks who own their own ball machines or practice regularly and take tennis lessons. These are people focused on improving their game.

The B2B segment includes clubs, academies, resorts, and schools—organizations trying to improve skills and provide better training experiences.

Having these two sides of the equation gives us different perspectives on the use cases for the robot. Players use it for personal training, while coaches are in the middle. Sometimes coaches use it for lessons as individuals, and sometimes they buy it for their clubs and facilities to rent out to individuals.

Individuals often use it for personal practice or their kids. Some use it to practice serves, while others enhance their tennis lessons to make the experience more valuable.

Clubs, on the other hand, may rent it out, offer it as a value-add for members, or use it as a motivational tool. For instance, some coaches use it to motivate kids by saying, “If you hit five inside-out forehands, you can play with the rover.” The excitement it creates is amazing.

Topgolf.Club

Yeah, that makes sense. Another question: Are there any players in this market besides Tennibot? Do you have competition or other automated solutions, or does most of the market belong to Tennibot for now?

There’s nobody else in this space. Some companies are working on analytics using computer vision—apps or expensive hardware to track players on the court—but nothing like Tennibot.

There are no smart ball machines—not “smart” just because they have an app, but truly smart in the sense that they move and recreate human play. Sure, you can call anything smart if you slap an app on it, but there’s nothing else with the capability to move and simulate human play like Tennibot.

Topgolf.Club

Do you have any partnerships or collaborations with tennis players, professional athletes, or companies? How does the marketing side of the business work?

So a lot of the marketing side has been organic. Luckily, so far, people like yourself find us whether they see an ad or organic posts. A lot of our posts go viral as people share them, saying they have a soothing effect on them.

We were fortunate to meet Donald Young, a former number one junior player and one of the top 20 current pickleball players in the world. We met him at a conference, hit it off, and he ended up coming on board as an investor, mentor, and advisor. It has been great having and working with Donald since we met him last year. He’s a super nice guy, very down-to-earth, and an amazing player. His backhand, in particular, is very, very impressive to see up close, especially when we were shooting a video with him. Seeing that magic and how clean his backhand is was a very nice experience.

Understood. Also, I wanted to ask about your website. There are two possible options to get the rover: a buy option and a rent-to-own option. Which one is more sought after? Are people mostly buying, or are they using the rent-to-own option?

Most of the orders come in as purchases, but some folks start with the rent-to-own option. After a month or two, they often switch to buying once they get comfortable with the product.

But most of the orders we’ve been getting are for the buying option. Renting is more of a trial for some people to see how the technology works.

Topgolf.Club

So they look at it as a trial?

Yeah, basically they look at it as a trial. And some people keep it, after some time.

Topgolf.Club

How do you take care of the maintenance? Is there regular maintenance, or are maintenance personnel flying all over the country to take care of the robots?

Great question. When we initially designed the product, we kept in mind that we didn’t want any additional work required. That’s why, as part of the rigorous engineering behind it, we tested the product extensively. We created “torture chambers” where we ran the machine non-stop.

I think the rover picked up 1.2 million balls before we stopped testing. It didn’t fail; it kept going. We just felt that 1.2 million balls was a sufficient amount to demonstrate its durability. So it’s a very rugged product. Even though it looks consumer-friendly, it’s built to last.

There’s no maintenance required other than the user needing to wipe the roller if there are leaves or debris. The same goes for the drive wheels—if they drive it in a messy environment, they just need to wipe the wheels. That’s it. The product is very solid.

Most updates and fixes can be done over-the-air (OTA). As long as they connect the device to the internet, we can push OTA updates, or they can request them. In rare cases where there’s a hardware issue, we can ship a loaner unit. They then have the choice to either keep the loaner or return it to get their original unit back. Some people get attached to their units and even name them—they’ll say, “I need my Pop back” or “I need my Kevin back.” So we send their original unit back.


Topgolf.Club

Understood. I also wanted to dive into your financials a little bit. You mentioned having a really successful Kickstarter campaign. How does your shareholder structure look? Was the campaign tied to equity, or was it structured differently?

Sure. The Kickstarter campaign was crowdfunding, so it was like e-commerce. People were buying the product; no equity was given. Those were early customers and backers who supported us early on.

We also raised some funding through our smaller network when we first started. During the early days at the university, some professors and mentors wrote small checks. Then we applied to and got into an accelerator program—one of the top two in the U.S. It was a great experience, and we ended up being one of their top companies to go through the program.

We were fortunate to raise an oversubscribed pre-seed round. We got investors from all over—not just from typical places like San Francisco and New York, but also from Europe and the Middle East. We had a wide range of investors, from angels and family offices to VCs. Some wrote $500k checks, while others contributed $10k to $15k. This was for our pre-seed round in 2021.

Now, we’re planning to raise another round next month based on the success we’ve seen with the rover and other products in the pipeline. So, the plan is to open a seed round in the coming months. We’ve already had a lot of inbound interest—not just from existing investors who’ve seen our progress, but also from new investors excited by our product line and vision.

Topgolf.Club

Will the new round also be open to the public, or will it be a private event?

It will be open in the sense that any accredited investor can participate. We’re accepting a wide range of check sizes because some of our smaller investors have introduced us to much larger checks and bigger opportunities.

We’re very excited and thankful for the group we’ve built so far. For example, Helen Greiner, the co-founder of Roomba (the iRobot vacuum cleaner), joined as an investor and mentor. Donald Young, a tennis player, is also an investor.

We’ve been fortunate to have a good group of investors, and we’re hopeful that this next round will bring in another great group of folks to help us continue building Tennibot.

Topgolf.Club

Yeah. I mean, that is one of the reasons why I really like sports so much—because maybe it is the only thing that can bring so many different people from so many different backgrounds into one spot and bring all of them together, which is extremely hard to achieve with any other kind of activity.

Yep, that’s right.

Topgolf.Club

Okay, then we can get to the next section. I wanted to ask, what kind of feedback you have received until now? Any surprising insights?

So far, we’ve received a lot of positive feedback in terms of people seeing what we’re doing and using the product. We’ve also received a lot of feedback on the app specifically, which has been very useful. We designed it from a certain perspective, but once consumers take the robot and start controlling it with the app, they provide us with valuable insights.

One surprising user insight was about the sweeper attachment. We added it because a lot of coaches said it would be great if the Tennibot could sweep the court after finishing picking up balls. So we started brainstorming and prototyping the sweeper.

Topgolf.Club

What is your long-term vision for the business and sports? How do you see Tennibot contributing to that vision?

Great question. Our vision is to continue improving the experience for players, giving them better access to shots, helping them improve their game, and making it more fun to play tennis and racket sports in general.

I think racket sports are a great entry point into sports for many people—whether you’re a former athlete or someone who’s never played sports before. Having access to these kinds of innovations can open a lot of doors. It allows people to get fit, start moving, sweat, have fun, and socialize. Ideally, they can continue playing these sports late into their lives because they are lifetime sports.

It’s not something you do for just a week or a couple of years and then stop. Ideally, you continue playing forever. If Tennibot can play a role in getting more people to play and enjoy racket sports—and sports in general—then we’ll have achieved something meaningful. From a coach and club perspective, it’s about offering value to consumers and players, especially as more and more people become tech-savvy.

What clubs or coaches used to offer in the past may not be as appealing to the new generation of customers who expect technology to be embedded in their entertainment and training options.

Topgolf.Club

Yeah, we hear this all the time. New and older athletes often discuss how the sport is evolving with training methods, diets, etc. Training methods might continue to evolve, with players training with robots to be more efficient. For example, if you’re training for an hour and can hit 200 tennis shots, with a solution like the Tennibot Partner, you might hit 500. This essentially makes you a much better player in a shorter amount of time.

Correct. It’s also a smart investment for an athlete’s career because it can pay off in just one tournament. When you start thinking about how this scales and compounds, it’s incredible. If you hit 100 extra shots today, how many is that per week? Per month? Per year?

This translates into measurable improvement in your game. Often, a 1%, 2%, or 3% improvement in your game can make all the difference in winning those close matches.

Topgolf.Club

Last question: Do you already have, or are you planning to have, partnerships with tennis tournaments? Could Tennibots be used during tournaments as a marketing tool?

Also, we’ve been hearing lately that human factors, like line referees, are being eliminated at some tournaments. For example, I think Wimbledon this year won’t have line referees anymore; everything will be automated. Could we eventually see Tennibots replacing ball kids in the future?

Great question. Yes, we are currently in discussions, though nothing has been finalized yet. However, I don’t think Tennibot will replace ball boys and ball girls.

The primary use case is for practice courts—where athletes or players train and warm up before their matches. So it’s more about enhancing the practice experience, not replacing human roles during matches.

Topgolf.Club

I haven’t seen this in your commercial, but I assume that if you’re at a Grand Slam or tennis tournament, it’s totally possible to customize Tennibots with tournament colors and logos, right?

Correct. It’s an additional publicity opportunity for the tournament as well.

Topgolf.Club

All right, that was my last question. Thank you for your time, and thank you for joining us!

Thank you for having me, I enjoyed the conversation.

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