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Business Standard

Ex-Puma India chief to build multi-brand sports empire with ₹600 crore

Abhishek Ganguly, who built Puma India from ₹20 crore to ₹3,900 crore during his 18-year tenure, is now planning to scale up multiple sports apparel brands to multi-million-dollar levels through his venture Agilitas Sports. The former Puma India head, who helped the German brand overtake Adidas for market leadership, is applying his growth strategies to build a portfolio of international and homegrown athletic brands in India's expanding sports market. In the near future, Agilitas aims to bring and build three international brands and one domestic brand in the sportswear category. 'We are building India's largest sports company. We will be very focused on sportswear—that's the only business I and the team understand,' Abhishek Ganguly, co-founder and CEO at Agilitas Sports, said. 'All four brands will be built with a very long-term view and at depth. The first two brands we feel have a minimum ₹2,000 crore opportunity in the next seven years.' One of the international brands Ganguly revealed he is scaling up in India is Italian sportswear label Lotto. It recently made a strategic foray into the country, spearheaded by Agilitas, with an ambitious five-year plan to achieve ₹1,000 crore in revenue. Agilitas holds exclusive rights for the Lotto brand in India, South Africa, and Australia. Founded in Italy over five decades ago, Lotto enters India with Leggenda, its premium sneaker line featuring designs from the '70s-'90s, now manufactured at Agilitas-acquired Mochiko Shoes. Over the next year, Lotto will expand into sportswear, apparel, and accessories, reinforcing its ambition to lead the next chapter of sportswear culture. But how does he avoid brand confusion while building multiple sports brands simultaneously through Agilitas and ensure each has distinct market positioning? Ganguly's strategy relies on product differentiation and distinct brand narratives rather than category separation, since all four brands operate in the same sportswear space. 'The offering will be very different from each of the brands. When we launch Lotto football, we will not do that in any other of our three brands,' said Ganguly. 'When we launch the Lotto tennis shoe, we will not do that in any of our three brands. The consumer stories and brand positioning will be very distinctly different.' Sportswear Market India's sportswear market is currently sized at over $10 billion and projected to reach $16.6 billion by 2033, with robust double-digit growth expected. Ganguly is competing with players like Nike, Adidas, and Puma, especially given their massive marketing budgets and brand recognition. Ganguly believes India's large, under-penetrated sportswear market offers room for multiple players to succeed, contrasting with his earlier Puma experience when the market was smaller and resources were limited. "The situation in India is totally different. The size of the market is very large and there are very few players. It's a 15-18 per cent growth business in the next 8-10 years,' he noted. But simultaneously scaling up multiple brands requires significant capital—a challenge Ganguly anticipated. He had the strategic foresight in securing substantial funding upfront rather than pursuing piecemeal fundraising rounds. The firm raised ₹600 crore of capital in the first year of setting it up. 'We have capitalized ourselves very well,' he noted. "We don't need to raise ₹1,000 crore every year. We're not creating brands at a price point where we are selling at low gross margins. We are very well thought through. We are focusing on improving efficiency." Pricing and Manufacturing "We as a country need to get pride back in our own manufacturing. We are better and definitely equal to some of the other Far Eastern Asian peers. This is very proudly made in India and I can dare say it is better than lots made in China and Vietnam." He is positioning Indian manufacturing as equal to global standards while using value pricing to build long-term customer loyalty rather than competing on premium positioning. What is also playing a key role for Agilitas in its ambitions is the acquisition of Mochiko Shoes, one of India's largest sports footwear manufacturers, for an undisclosed amount in 2023. Mochiko, which was established in 2008, had reported revenue of ₹642 crore in FY2023 and was estimated to grow 30 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y). 'It is a cash-generative asset,' he said.