India continues to be a key strategic market for Adidas. Adidas continues to strengthen its positioning in India through a consumer-first retail strategy, tapping into localized consumer passion points and leveraging its partnership with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) as the official kit and jersey sponsor.
From investing heavily in the most celebrated sport of India – cricket, to laying a foundation for a jersey culture, Adidas is aiming to strengthen its position and India’s position on the global sports map. As the T20 World Cup inches closer, Adidas also unveiled the new team India jersey to reinforce its support to athletes.
In an interview with Storyboard18’s Delshad Irani, Neelendra Singh, managing director, adidas India, shared key points in the sportswear major’s India game-plan and how it is racing to become the largest sportswear brand in the country.
Excerpts
You’ve been at Adidas a while now and you’ve had international stints. Then you came back to India in 2019, just before the pandemic. How did you use that time to set the stage for the growth that you’re planning for, especially when you’ve seen competitors like Puma racing ahead. What’s the view on Adidas getting back share and accelerated growth?
So let’s start with the pandemic. Of course, it hit hard. Like everybody, we were hit as well. Stores were shut down. But it kind of was a pivot point. For a lot of our consumers and as humans, we realized the power of staying healthy, the power of engaging in sport or at least fitness in that sense. So once the pandemic was over in 2021, we realized that we have a moment coming. We saw the first signs of revenge shopping at that point of time. We could see that the construct of the wardrobe is changing, moving towards more athleisure from formal wear. That is when we signed up on a massive acceleration plan, which right now we are executing.
Few parts of the execution plan, which we kind of were able to reset during the COVID or just after COVID are the following: We realized the power of digital at that point of time. So we doubled down on digital and we received the global platform, our adidas.co.in came to us during that point of time. We were able to elevate our online experience through a global app and website, which wasn’t there earlier. Hence the consumer experience went to a completely different level because now you could shop on the global adidas platform.
Along with that came our program called adiClub. We have millions of consumers on the platform. And because we are a sports company, we can give a bunch of experiences that money can’t buy. Like tickets to the finals of the football world cup, meet and greet with athletes, and such. So there was this element of really amplifying digital that happened during that point of time.
Besides increasing and dialing up digital touchpoints and physical experiences, what else are you doing?
The other piece that we really doubled down was our strategy about making in India. In India, the first 80 million consumers are like anywhere else in the world, that’s a heavily contested marketplace in tier one and two. But the next 150 to 200 million consumers are ready. They’re shopping digitally. Therefore distribution isn’t a challenge. The question is, do we have the product to reach that consumer through the digital distribution? That is when we created a lot of product ranges relevant for India.
Creating products made for India and made in India as well has helped us really reach and recruit millions and millions of consumers through new products and new distribution that’s largely digital.
There’s a third aspect of what we really cranked up. We said, we have the obligation to drive or to decide or showcase the flight path to the consumer. From an experience perspective. So we doubled down on our own retail strategy. We have about 80 odd stores, all in key cities in AAA locations. We either took them back from our franchise partners as part of the strategy or expanded the real estate to be able to drive a higher or better consumer experience; while leveraging the relationships with our franchise partners to double down on mid-market India for expansion of stores in that area.
A two-pronged retail strategy – at the top of the pyramid, do-it-yourself, do it in a larger real estate, which elevates the consumer experience. At the mid-market, leverage the partnership, the franchise partners to go deeper and unlock growth.
A combination of all this has propelled the growth in the last couple of years and we will continue to execute like this and outgrow competition in the years to come, definitely.
Good confidence there from you. Personal question, Neel, what sport is your favorite as a viewer and as a practitioner?
Our CEO says that we are all sports romantics. We tend to watch all the sports. I play badminton very regularly. Running is something I do occasionally, but in our business, typically a lot of meetings start with running 5K once in a while, so you have to be able to run in general. But lately, since I’ve returned back to India, I’ve become a big fan of cricket. I guess the access that we have today as partners with the BCCI, gives us a ringside view of what’s happening in cricket. So, I’ve become a bigger fan of cricket since I returned to India.
Watch this space for more and catch the interview on Storyboard18 on CNBC-TV18.