The captain of Indian cricket team, Virat Kohli added one more century to its name, this time not in the field but off the field. As per the report published in Times of India, Kohli’s Athleisure brand One8, which he co-created with German major Sportswear retailer Puma, has scaled an overall sales of Rupees 100 Crore within the first year of its Launch.
With the latest development, Kohli will get 10% of that amount as royalty according to the terms of the agreement with Puma which subsequently takes the annual earning of the cricketer from Puma to around Rupees 22 to 24 crore.
Signing up with the German sportswear brand, Puma has made this 29 year old cricketer, Kohli as the maiden Indian Sportsperson to signs any brand endorsement deal worth of rupees 110 Crore.
Commenting over the sales hike, the MD of Puma India Abhishek Ganguly said,” We believe collaborating with Virat back in 2017 was the right direction for the brand. Success of our collaboration with One8 has lot to do with Virat’s popularity. Also, the launch comes at a time when he is at such a pinnacle in his career, “. He added more,”Currently, we are planning to double the range of products in this collaboration.”
Comparing the One8 annual first year sales to some of the pre-existing athleisure brands in India, Reebok India scaled revenues of around Rs 390 crore in 2017-18, Market leading contender Adidas notches up sale of rupees 1,097 crore an US sportswear brand Nike’s sale in Indian market retained around rupees 764 crore in FY16.
It should be noted that all these companies have been doing business in India for more than a decade. While Speaking to TOI, Indian Captain Virat Kohli said,” One8 is a brand very close to me and I have been personally involved in the conceptualization of the line”. He added “the vision is to build the brand and go beyond the product to capture a way of life.”
This is not for the time happening when a cricketer open his own brand, as others like MS Dhoni launched his sports clothing and footwear brand, seven. Maestro, off spinner Harbhajan Singh also has also joined the bandwagon by launching his own Bhajji Sports Line of apparel and sports gear. In addition to all those mentioned above, our very own Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar also tried his hand at it by joining hand with Brand SRT.
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