Indians made a solid start to their campaign in the Singapore Open badminton tournament, the trio of Saina Nehwal [ Images ], Arvind Bhat [ Images ] and Anup Sridhar winning their qualifying openers of the Super Series event.

National champion Saina Nehwal opened the proceedings, beating Jie Yao of The Netherlands 21-19, 19-21, 21-13 in a fiercely contested match that lasted 52 minutes.

Nehwal next takes on Juan Gu of Singapore, who thumped sixth seed Pui Yin Yip of Hong Kong 21-11, 21-12 in less than 30 minutes.

Sridhar then continued the winning momentum for the Indians and defeated Chinese Taipei's Yu Hsin Hsieh 22-20, 19-21, 21-11 to set up a second round clash with Sairul Amar Ayob of Malaysia on Thursday.

Arvind, however, had to fight from a game down to get the better of fifth seed Przemyslaw Wacha of Poland 13-21, 21-13, 21-14 after 39 minutes.

He next faces Joachim Persson of Denmark, who thrashed Eric Pang of The Netherlands 21-14, 21-18.

However, Nehwal could not replicate her singles' form in doubles and the Indian and her Canadian partner Anna Rice went down 18-21, 13-21 to eighth seeded Dane pair of Kamilla Rytter Juhl and Lena Frier Kristiansen.