Despite losing their pre-quarterfinal matches at the ITTF World Table Tennis Team Championships in Busan on Wednesday, both the Indian men’s and women’s teams will qualify for the Olympics for the first time ever by taking the last world ranking spot.

It’s the first time that India will qualify for the team event of an Olympics in table tennis since the event was included at the Beijing 2008 Games.

While the official list of team rankings will come out on March 4, as per calculations, both table tennis teams have made the cut for Paris.

“The men’s and the women’s teams played very well and we’re proud of them. We’re waiting for the official announcement that we have qualified for the Paris Olympics, which will come on the 5th of March,” Kamlesh Mehta, Table Tennis Federation of India general secretary, said.

The men’s table tennis team, led by 10-time national champion Sharath Kamal, were blanked 3-0 by a much better team in hosts Korea. The women put up a brave fight but lost 1-3 to the higher-ranked Chinese Taipei, which had the likes of World No.10 Cheng I-Ching and World No.41 Szu-Yu Chen.

“The entire team is very excited. We were looking forward to this day for a very long time. We’re extremely happy that we’ve made the cut for the Olympics though we have to wait for the quota to be confirmed officially. It’s truly a fantastic team effort by everyone, the coaches, support staff, federation and SAI. I think it’s truly historic for something like this to happen, to qualify as a team in both men’s and women’s,” top Indian men’s player Gnanasekaran Sathiyan said.