Mumbai: Puma India managing director Ramprasad Sridharan had let fitness slide in recent years. Now the former state-level player is back on the treadmill, running about five kilometres most days as he prepares for a 10K or half marathon.
It is an oddly fitting routine for a sportswear executive whose job is to help Puma navigate its own reset. The German brand has closed some stores, cut back on discounted business and is shifting its focus towards running, sports style, hybrid fitness and team sports.
“What brought us here will be very different from what will get us to the next level of growth,” Sridharan told ET in his first interview after he joined in December last year and had a career spanning more than two decades in footwear and fashion, including senior roles at Reebok, Clarks and Benetton.
Puma has grown its India business about fourfold in the past decade, with revenue of about Rs3,200 crore with the company selling slightly under 11 million pairs of footwear in FY26.
“The bottom end has become more crowded,” he said. “We are seeing consumers asking us for more value. I want better products.”
Running is now Puma’s biggest category, accounting for almost 30% of sales in its retail stores.
“Running has now become a very nuanced category,” Sridharan said, with consumers increasingly buying different shoes for everyday runs, tempo sessions, races and recovery.
That puts Puma in a more crowded field. Hoka and On have become increasingly visible among serious runners globally, while Nike, Adidas and Asics remain major competitors.
“There are more people with that kind of desire to buy 20,000 rupee shoes in the market,” he said.
Puma’s pitch is that consumers can access its global products in India at the same time as other markets. Sridharan said the company does not want to win by being the cheapest, but by offering products that deliver value.
However, his strategy comes as Nike, the world’s biggest sportswear company, faces a much tougher global backdrop. Nike shares have fallen about 78% from their November 2021 peak and hit a 12-year low this week.
Puma’s other big fitness bet is Hyrox, a competition that combines running with strength exercises. The company is the global partner of Hyrox and sees the sport as a way to push hybrid fitness and potentially another footwear category in India.
“Hyrox is a representation of hybrid fitness,” he said.
Then there is cricket. Puma’s partnership with Royal Challengers Bengaluru has become an important part of its team-sports business. The RCB business grew 75% this year and reached 1.8 billion viewers across 30 countries. The authentic RCB jersey sold out three times.
India, he said, is still in the early stages of “jersey culture” compared with football markets in Europe, where fans routinely wear club shirts as part of everyday life. The opportunity is to make team merchandise less of a seasonal cricket purchase and more of a part of sports culture.
Puma has about 400 stores in India after shutting roughly 20-25 outlets during the reset. Some stores were closed because they were unprofitable. Others were consolidated because the company decided that fewer, larger stores could provide a better experience.
“Retail is just not about selling products,” he said. “It is also about the experience that the consumer can get.”
Online already accounts for roughly half of the business, staying between 49% and 51% for several years.
Meanwhile, about 75% of Puma products are now made in India, up from about 49% in 2023. The company has also increased its equity investment in India by Rs490 crore this year and is setting up a global capability centre in Pune covering technology, AI, machine learning and content.
