Indian sportswear market

TARUN Puri is the managing director and general manager of Nike India Pvt Ltd overseeing business operations of the sportswear giant in India. In a brief conversation with SportzPower’s Javed Farooqui, Puri speaks about the sportswear industry, Nike's latest Bleed Blue campaign and much more.

How is business shaping up for Nike India?
At this point of time our business is doing exceptionally well but I don’t want to get into the details of it.

How important is the Indian market for Nike?
Extremely important. Clearly Nike worldwide recognises the importance of the Indian market and the fact that we are currently sponsoring the Indian cricket team is an example of how much investment we want to put behind it.

What are your views about the Indian sportswear market?
I think at this point of time the Indian sportswear industry is small but it will grow over a period of time. So as there is more consciousness about health and also indeed about sports, I think parents no longer hold it against their children if they want to do something in sports. So there is a lot more consciousness about sports and a lot of consciousness about keeping fit. I think these strengths will help the overall industry to grow.

How is the Indian sportswear industry performing year-on-year?
There are very different figures so it is difficult you a number but my understanding is that growth rates of the industry are anywhere between 15-20%.

And what is the size of the industry?
On a retail basis, it (sportswear industry) will be about 2,500 crore (Rs )

You are also AIFF’s partner and Indian football team has qualified for the 2011 Asian Cup. Do you any marketing plans with them?
Again, we have an extremely good relationship with AIFF and I am very proud to say that the Indian football team has done so well and there are some great players in the Indian football and we have a lot of hope for Football in India. Very pleased to see what they have done.

Which medium are you going to focus on to get your message across?
We have a complete media strategy… across different media channels. Its much more about connecting to the Indian youth and therefore there is a very strong on-ground, above-the-line but also its been done digitally and we had almost a million handprints digitally, which is a first in India.

Which are the cities that you are focusing on?
It’s an all India campaign.

Which TG are you trying to reach out to through this campaign?
The focus audience is 16-21 years. But then of course there are many other people who buy our products because they feel so strongly about the brand.

Globally, Nike is aggressively into Golf, what is your plan for the sport in India?
Golf is not looked after by the Nike India office but there is a strategy on Golf and it is looked after separately. Since, I don’t look after Golf I don’t want to comment on that.

Apart, from cricket and soccer, which are the other sports that you are focusing on in India?
We have Football, we have Tennis, we have Basketball, Boxing, Running, every sport. In Running we have the Nike Running Club, we have a huge Gym programme that we do, the MSSA (Mumbai Schools Sports Association) in Football, so we have a number of properties across a number of sports.

Could you talk about Nike Running club?
What we are trying to do is trying to build sports at the grass-roots. We have a strong association with the MSSA and there what we are trying to do is inculcate Football into the Maharashtra schools and that’s been a grand success. MUPC, which is the Manchester United Premier Cup actually started by Nike in India, had 60 odd teams and 100 plus teams that participate now. Then if you take the running club, we started that activity two years ago we now have 10,000 members. If you are in Bangalore and if you know how to run then you can go to the Nike Run Club. The Nike Run Club that we launched in Mumbai, which is on Marine Drive, and you want to learn running, then I urge you go there because the kind of techniques that they teach you is unique and our focus is to try and create a culture of running within India.