How Big Is India's Running Shoe Market?

It's easy to assume cricket and football gear still dominate Indian sports retail, and by cultural attention, they probably do. By actual footwear category revenue, running has quietly become the biggest single segment. Here's what the market data shows.

The market size

That's a 5.14% compound annual growth rate through 2034, per IMARC Group's market analysis. That's a real, if not explosive, growth rate for a market already worth billions. The more interesting number isn't the total, it's how that total splits by category.

Running is the biggest single category

Running shoes accounted for 31.8% of India's athletic footwear market in 2025, ahead of sports and training shoes at 27.6%, with every other category, walking, football, cricket, basketball and the rest, splitting the remaining 40.6% between them. Running is a single category outselling the second-place category by nearly a fifth. Applying that share to the 2026 market total works out to roughly $2.1 billion in running shoe sales specifically, a figure this article is calculating from IMARC's reported percentages and total, not one IMARC states directly.

Why this tracks with the participation data

This lines up with what the participation numbers elsewhere show. Running is one of the few sports categories in India where mass participation, not just fandom, translates directly into equipment spend: every marathon, half marathon or 10K finisher needs shoes, whereas most cricket and football fans in India are spectators, not weekly players buying kit. IMARC attributes the category's growth to rising health consciousness, growing sports participation, e-commerce expansion making specialist running brands accessible outside a handful of metro cities, and premiumisation, runners trading up to higher-priced technical shoes as they get more serious about the sport.