Ashwini Ponnappa is an elite Indian badminton player who represents the country at the international badminton circuit in both the women's and mixed doubles disciplines. She was born on 18 September 1989 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. She completed her schooling at Bangalore. Then her family shifted to Hyderabad and there she completed her Bachelor’s Degree. She is employed at ONGC. She started to prove from 2001 when she won the Indian junior championship. She has won doubles match in Sub-Junior Nationals and Junior Nationals at her young age. She was shot into limelight and got name and fame for the first time when she bagged gold medal at the South Indian Games held in the year 2006. 

She made a good pair with Jwala Gutta and won gold medal in the Women’s doubles event at 2010 Commonwealth Games. At 2012 London Olympics, she lost opening match together with Jwala Gutta in the women’s double competition to Japanese pair. She then won the next match against Chinese Taipei pair. Dipankar Bhattarcharjee was her coach and with his efforts she was able to rank 19th in the world in the doubles pair along with Jwala Gutta as of 15th October 2010. Her overall ranking in badminton was 82 as of September 2010. She took training under Edwin Iriawan and Syed Mohammed Arif also. Since it is her maiden Olympics, she is filled with excitement and is much expected. She won gold medal at 2010 Commonwealth games and bronze medal at the World Championships 2011. In 2012, She received the Arjuna Award for best performance in Badminton.