Daybreak - Nike needs India’s sneaker heads. But do they need Nike?

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

When the NBA complained about Micheal Jordan's black and red shoes, Nike turned the complaint into an ad, and sneakers ended up becoming a symbol of style and rebellion.In India, sneaker culture took longer to arrive. But last year, more than 200 people lined up outside a store in Bangalore for a limited edition shoe from Comet, a homegrown brand.And Nike could use that kind of enthusiasm right now. Its revenue fell 4% last quarter, and its losing ground in China, a major market, to local players. Which is why, its new Bangalore campus sounded like a bet on Indian sneaker heads. But other communications suggest that it's a "capability center", another back office, and this is after Nike has pulled away from India before. So, today we ask: is Nike fighting for the market that Comet, Gully Labs and Ten x You are carving out for themselves? And if it was, what would it take for it to win?This episode was edited by Arnav PrakashDaybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

In 1984 and 85, legendary basketball player Michael Jordan was playing his rookie season with the Chicago Bulls. He had just signed a deal with Nike for a signature shoe line of his own. But when he wore a black and red pair on court, the NBA or the National Basketball Association sent Nike a letter because the shoe broke the league's uniform rule. So, Nike turned that letter into an ad. In its commercial with Jordan, the shoes had black sensor bars on them and a message that said, The League threw them out of the game. Fortunately, the league can't stop you from wearing them. That is pretty much how the Air Jordan once took off.

And even though the details of the story are still debated, it doesn't really matter. The ad worked and sneakers stopped being just sports gear. It became a symbol of personal style and rebellion and pretty much kicked off sneaker culture. For Indians, the sneaker hype took much longer to travel. Growing up, I'm sure sneakers for us were just those white petee shoes, probably from Bata. But then, around 2016, stores like wedge non-wedge started bringing shoe drops from international brands to India. And by say 2020, people were building their outfits around their Jordans and sambas.

So when Nike said last week that it's setting up a new campus in Bangalore, with employees moving in from around mid-20207, it sounded like a bet on India's sneakerheads. A report from E.T. quoted the company as saying that the idea is to bring its teams closer to local consumers and that it sees India both as a growth market and manufacturing hub. Yet, on its most recent earnings call, the campus was referred to as a capability center. The announcement there centered more on consolidating global operations than deepening its position in India. And of course, there is real growth to chase in India. A business standard report this year puts India's sneaker market at roughly $4 billion

dollars according to industry estimates. A fraction of the $100 billion global industry, yes, but that also means that there is huge potential for growth. Potential that Nike's global peers like Puma, The Cathalon, Adidas and Skechers have already made the most of. And now there's homegrown brands like Comet, Gully Labs and 10XU that are moving into the market with real success so far. And Nike could really use the kind of growth that Spears saw.

Last quarter, its revenue fell by 4% to $11.2 billion. One of the major reasons for the dip was the company's falling position in China, which makes up about 15% of Nike's sales. Also, the company expects a high single-digit tip this fiscal year. So, Nike needs a new growth story. And India's still young sneaker culture could be the answer. And yet, Nike has pullback from India at least twice before. It closed a good chunk of its India stores in 2016 and cancelled plans for a new back office in 2020.

Then, this year, it handed its online store over to Nike for operations. And so far, it hasn't announced a single move to design, price or sales specifically for India. Right now, it does look more like it's following other MNCs and treating India as yet another back office. And let's assume that Nike's new campus was all about trying to go deeper into the Indian market. But the thing is, Indian sneakerheads no longer need a Nike the way they used to. Local brands that position themselves as made for India, India and by Indians are crowding around consumers. And they are using the same tactics that has kept Nike successful for years, shoes with

stories and limited drops. And people are actually lining up. So if Nike did want to fight for this market, what would it take for it to win? Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Treeti River Geese, and every day of the week, my co-host Nika Sharma and will bring you one news story that is worth understanding and worth your time. today's Wednesday the 7th of October. In August last year,

200 people lined up outside a store in Bangalore at 8am on a Saturday. This was Comet's own Nike movement. The line was for its own black and red shoes that it had created with Nauru Noodle Bar, a popular Bangalore Raman spot that's notoriously hard to get reservations at.

The shoes also featured a chopstick attached to each side. Utkars Kupta, founder told the print that Comments sold all 450 pairs of the shoe in basically 45 seconds. This, by the way, when the product wasn't even discounted and was sold at a price of $6,000. In fact, he even shared that the line went by the Apple store next to Comments, and when the Apple manager came out and said that there was no launch that day, Gupta told him that the line was not for Apple.

That's what Sneka culture has grown to be in India over just a few years. In 2016, when wedge non-wedge was launched in India by Anandah O'Houja, whom you may know as Sonam Kapoor's husband, it was one of the first multi-brand sneaker boutiques in India. People would actually line up outside the store for exclusive drops. But the premium pieces here were still priced quite high, like the Jordan ones. For context, the Air Jordan 1 retro, low, OG, band, as it's still called, is priced at almost 15,000 on wedge-on-wedge.

Another variant called the Air Jordan 1 retro high is priced at almost 17,000 on Nike fashion. So for the many Indian buyers who couldn't afford the prices or the weight, first copies and convincing knock-offs were the answer. In Delhi's Karolbach, for example, fake Nikes, Adidas and new balances sell for around $1,000. And that's before you get into the famous Delhi haggling negotiations. The founder of Zayden, another Indian sneaker brand, told the print that it was the people who aspired towards a Nike that bought the first copies, because Nike did not offer anything at a similar price point.

And the space between these two ends, the super expensive international brand, lifestyle shoes, and their cheap knock-offs is where the homegrown Indian brands come in. Take Gupta and Comet, for example. He explained to the print that he had split the market, into a two-by-two. In one quadrant sat the high-price, high-aspiration brands like Nike and Adidas. Unbranded sneakers sat in the low-price, low-aspiration quadrant. He wanted Comet to sit at the space where it was both high aspiration and attainable, if not cheap.

Comet has been fairly successful at this so far. It focused on coming up with very Dacysi limited designs that had a premium feel to them but were priced closer to Nike's entry-level sneakers at about $4,000 to $7,000. In fact, Comet's first shoe was based on mangoes, something all-Indians love. The shoe was yellow and green, and the package that the shoe was shipped in even had hay in them, just like how pox is packed with mangoes do. Comet also designs for Indian feet, with one of its other first releases featuring wide-set toes. Its success so far reflects in its finances. Last month, it raised 100 crore rupees in a series B

and it said in a your story piece that its revenue was up by nine times since its round in 2024. Gully Labs, another popular Indian brand, designs around Indian references. Think Fulcari embroidery, Diwali-inspired looks and even a customization area for buyers in its Delhi store. It also owns its own factories and doesn't work with contracts. manufacturing. It has stores in five cities and has new jobs roughly every two months. Its latest FY25 report showed that its revenue was at nearly 3 crores up from 3 lakhs in FY24. It also announced in a report about its seed round in FI25 that it was at an annualized run rate of 30 crore rupees. Then there's 10xU, which is Sachin Dendurkar, one of India's

most celebrated cricket players brand, which is working more on the same. sportswear side. My colleague, Tanmay Harka, wrote in a piece about the company that it turned to a study conducted in 2021 and 22 by the Central Leather Research Institute. The study found that 40% of Indians had wider four feet than standard UK shoe sizes allowed for and 45% had flatter or lower arches. This data inspired the company to make wider shoes with higher ankle collars for stability and it also partnered with Insight, an American insol designer, to develop insoles that better supported fallen arches. Even the soles of the shoes are being designed to last longer

because Indian runners often run on roads, broken pavement and loose gravel, all of which can reduce the life of a shoe because of friction. Karthik Gurumurti, 10x U's co-founder, told Tanmai that Tendulkar himself tests and trains in every morning. before he offers feedback. The company currently claims that it has an annualized revenue of 60 crore rupees. Now, of course, all these brands are still way smaller than Nike. Comments valuation, for example, is a little more than 500 crore rupees,

which my colleague Nuha notes in her piece about the company is small compared to global brands. As for 10xU, industry experts question how much room it has to grow. And while there may be room, it hasn't really been. proven yet. Also, the thing to note is that these shoes aren't that much cheaper than an entry-level Nike. So, their USBs are less about price and more about localized designs and fit. So what does Nike's current position in India look like? Nike India is small. It reportedly made about 1,400 true rupees in FY25. That's up by 16% from the year before, but it still trailed behind Decathlon, Puma, Adidas and Skechers.

It's also just about 0.35% of Nike's global revenue from that year, by the way, taking exchange rates into account. Puma, by comparison, got about 4% of its global sales from India in 2023. And all these rivals that are just named have been growing fast over here. A registrar of companies' filings show that Puma, decathlon, Adidas, Skechers and A6s more than double their India business in the two. years to FI.23 growing about 35 to 60% in a year. Nike, meanwhile, has actually been scaling back. Like I mentioned earlier, in 2016, Nike closed 35% of its India stores to cut financial losses

over here. This left it with about 200 stores across the entire country. By 2019, that number was down to about 150. I also just checked the Nike website store. locator for India and turns out the number has actually fallen even further to just 104 stores. In comparison, Puma has over 400. Then, in 2020, reports said that the company had cancelled plans for a big Bangalore back office. It even laid off staff here and moved some to its Southeast Asia teams. Multiple outlets at the time noted that it signaled India's diminishing importance as a growth market for the company. After that, the latest chapter in Nike's troubles in India was its online store.

Multiple reports said that it was struggling with logistics. There were delivery delays, check out problems on the page, and turns out a report from Inc.42 said that Nike didn't even have a single warehouse in India and that it was shipping all its products from a hub in Singapore. Nike also ended up facing supply side issues when an Indian regulator conducted rates at e-commerce warehouses and seized imported footwear that lacked mandatory certification, which led to even more inventory shortage and delays for the company. So, Nike had Nike step in as a local partner to fix Nike's execution gaps in India.

Nike called it a strategy update, kept running its physical stores and hired an agency for e-commerce marketing. Now, it has just over 100 stores, and it has even outsourced a major shopper-facing part of its business to a partner. either because it couldn't or would not localize itself better. So what is the Bangalore campus for? On the recent earnings call, Elliot Hill, the company CEO, said that the campus was the next step in making Nike's supply chain more flexible and cost-effective.

He also said that the campus mission was to drive new capabilities and ways of working for Nike and that they will work closely with the teams around the world to run the business with greater speed and precision. The call also announced a new restructuring effort called Pace. The restructure was triggered by the pressure the company is currently under and aims to save about $2.5 billion by fiscal year 2013. The restructure will also result in reduced roles in the company over time. In fact, in April this year, Nike had already cut about 1,400 tech roles in the US and China.

It even shut down three tech centers in Atlanta, USA, China and Poland, and said that it was consolidating its tech work around Oregon USA and the Nike India Technology Center in Bangalore. Even though it hasn't officially stated that it's moving any of its controls to India, the new campus does suggest a further consolidation. E.T. also quotes the company as having said that the move will free up resources, which seems to suggest that India will be a much cheaper place for the future. company to do so. It will have cheaper real estate costs for sure, while also having access to a

large pool of domestic engineers and AI talent. Considering Pace's savings goal, advisory firms that sell these kinds of centers to MNCs claim that they are 40 to 70% cheaper to run than teams in the US. And while Nike has mentioned that this move will bring its team closer to local consumers, it has not said what it's going to do with the proximity yet. and not making the most of proximity is exactly what hurt Nike in China. Local brands like Anta and Leaning beat the global giant and Nike sales fell by about 26% last quarter after having spent nearly four decades in the top three.

They both beat Nike in different ways. Anta, for example, had lower logistics costs because its entire supply chain from manufacturing to selling was local and cheaper. It also priced its performance gear at half of Nike's cost and made almost $8 billion in revenue and overtook Nike in 2022 as the largest sportswear brand in the country. Leaning focused on professional sports and honoring Chinese heritage in its designs. It sold more than 26 million pairs of its professional running shoes in 2025. And according to the Ken, it eventually pushed Nike to the third place.

What also helped these brands was a state push for. for Chinese people to buy locally and to embrace something they call China chic. In fact, an expert in a CNBC article basically said that Nike had become irrelevant in China. Analysts also claimed that one reason for Nike's decline in Greater China was that the team there did not have much freedom to launch products, especially without a sign-off from the office in Portland. In fact, Nike has only just named its first ever Greater China VP of local product creation this July. And now it has even doubled the team size and has created a

first collection specifically for China that will be released later this month. The company also aims to keep releasing more locally designed, developed and manufactured products in China. So, if Nike wants to compete in the same space in India, it could, because it still has relevance here. But it hasn't made an attempt yet, and no similar strategy has been announced. for India. Nike's next investor day is next month, where it will lay out its long-term strategy and goals. The truth is, Nike's current scale in India is not big enough for its losses to hurt the way China's did. But if Nike doesn't plan to bring its renewed China approach here and build for Indians instead of just selling to them, local brands will keep growing and taking

up space. And the longer Nike waits, the harder it will be to win Indian shoppers later. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of a subscriber-only offerings and a full subscription unlocks daily, long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcasts. Head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by me, Rachel Wurkees, and edited by Arna Prakash.