Lucknow: While top seeds Saina Nehwal and Parupalli Kashyap had easy wins, second seeded shuttler P.V. Sindhu had to fight hard to progress to the pre-quarterfinals of the USD 120,000 India Grand Prix Gold being held at the Babu Banarasi Das Indoor Stadium here Wednesday.

While Saina notched up a 29-minute 21-7, 21-9 win in her women’s singles first round match against Swedish Matilda Petersen, Kashyap took the same amount of time to beat Malaysia’s Yee Han Chong 21-10, 21-12 in Round 2 of the men’s singles draw which has 64 players. All other draws have 32.