Sachin Tendulkar folds 24-yr cricket learnings into his shoes, athleisure start-up

Tendulkar is co-founder and chief inspiration officer of Ten x You, which debuted a series of shoes meant for professional cricketers. The brand has been testing the shoes with cricket academies and semi-professional players since March this year.

Athleisure refers to clothing with both the functionality of sports apparel and the comfort of casual wear.

Ten x You aims to bring insights, some highly technical, from the master cricketer’s career. “I don’t want to go by what other brands are missing out," Tendulkar told Mint in an interview.

“As far as our brand is concerned, there is 24 years of experience in the field, so I have used that. My experiences over the years playing in different conditions, different surfaces, some normal, some softer, some dusty grounds. [Our question was] how can we design a shoe that will address all of that?"

The brand is debuting its products on a direct-to-consumer (D2C) website first (www.tenxyou.com) and will move to offline sales and other channels in six months after identifying top-performing products. Apart from shoes, the brand is selling t-shirts, pants, and other sports apparel on its website.

The professional cricket shoes will sell for upwards of ₹9,000, and semi-pro ones for ₹5,500- ₹ 6,000 per pair.

Cricket first

The idea is to start with cricket, said co-founder and chief executive Gurumurthy, with shoes and products for running, training, and athleisure to be launched later. “We believe that we need to win in a particular sport and clearly capture in the minds of the consumer that (we) are a top-notch performance brand," he told Mint in an interview. “That is our beachhead strategy."

“Once we win there, we will slowly transcend into people who play cricket at a recreational level," he added.

Gurmurthy cited the running shoe brands ON and New Balance as successful examples of this strategy. Tennis star Roger Federer is a brand ambassador for ON.

Tendulkar owns 54.78% of Ten x You. The brand raised over ₹25 crore last September from venture firm Peak XV’s early-stage accelerator Surge Ventures.

To be sure, this is his second venture in the apparel business. In 2016, he collaborated with textile major Arvind Brands to launch menswear brand True Blue.

Besides apparel, Tendulkar and his family have invested in several sports and entertainment businesses. Last month, risk management firm Kroll estimated his brand value at over $112 million, ranking him fifth among India’s biggest celebrities.

Get moving

Tendulkar says his aim with Ten x You is to encourage Indians to get active, describing it as his goal after retiring from cricket.

“At the grassroots level, children should go out and play as much as possible," he said. “That develops you as a person, your fine motor skills, reflexes, and coordination. Those things will never develop if you sit at home. That is the innings I want to play for India after retirement. I will continue to bat for India, but in a different capacity."

Besides, he added, he drew on his extensive experience recovering from sports injuries to collaborate with experts and create products that work for all Indians trying to get active.

“Even I did not have as much knowledge of insoles until 2000, until I got injured," he told Mint. “It kept me out of action for a while. I went to South Africa and learned the importance of distributing pressure points [across the foot]. Each person you will see has different points in different parts of the foot."

Gurumurthy said the brand also tested shoes with cricket academies and coaches across India, getting feedback to improve the design of the shoes.

Sachin not the first

Tendulkar’s brand is the latest in a long line of athleisure ventures headlined by athletes and celebrities in India. In 2017, cricketer Virat Kohli launched shoes under the One8 brand—named after his jersey number 18—alongside sports giant Puma. This was later extended to include apparel, innerwear, and a series of health-food restaurants named One8 Commune.

Earlier this year, Kohli acquired nearly 2% in sports goods manufacturing firm Agilitas Sports.

Fellow cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni also launched a sportswear brand Seven in 2016, while Yuvraj Singh also ventured into apparel with YWC clothing that same year.

Actor Hrithik Roshan was among the first in the business, with the athleisure line HRX for apparel that e-commerce firm Myntra launched in 2013; the brand crossed ₹1,000 crore in revenue last year, according to advertising and marketing portal StoryBoard 18.

However, not all cricketer-led apparel brands have done well. WROGN, another Kohli-fronted brand, now owned by Aditya Birla Fashion's D2C vertical TMRW, reported a 9% drop in revenue in 2024-25 to ₹223 crore while losses surged more than 30% year-on-year to ₹75 crore.

“There is still a lot of white space to be covered in the athleisure market," Prasanth Shantakumaran, partner and head of the sports sector at consulting firm KPMG India, told Mint. “There is clutter in the mass segment, but India does not yet have a proper, high-end brand addressing enthusiasts of a wide set of sports."

Most well-heeled Indians prefer buying shoes and apparel made by Nike, Adidas, Puma, and the like, while Indian athleisure brands tend to focus on mass price points of ₹500-1,000, he said. “We may be making the goods for these high-end international brands, but we need a homegrown Indian brand that can appeal worldwide," he added.

In a report on the business of sports in India released in September, KPMG estimated the market for sports goods and apparel manufacturing at $6.7 billion, predicting it would grow to $10 billion by 2030.

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