Paris: India is a ‘huge precedence’ marketplace for Decathlon, and the French sports activities retailer expects the nation to be amongst its prime 5 world markets inside the subsequent 5 years, helped by enlargement of retailer community and elevated native sourcing, based on a prime firm official.

Decathlon, as a part of its progress plans, will add 10 new shops yearly in India, whereas accelerating on-line gross sales and in addition growing native sourcing to over 90 per cent within the subsequent 5 years from the present common of 60 per cent, its Chief Retail & Countries Officer Steve Dykes mentioned.

This transfer would assist Decathlon grow to be extra aggressive within the fast-growing Indian sports activities and athleisure section and improve exports to world markets from its Indian manufacturing facility, he mentioned.

India “is a top priority for us. We have five countries, which we call as leapfrog jump countries and one of them is India,” Dykes mentioned, whereas talking at a Decathlon world occasion right here.

For Decathlon, India is already among the many prime ten (markets globally in income phrases). “We wanted to get it into the top five,” Dykes mentioned, including that this is able to occur inside the subsequent 5 years.

For the monetary 12 months ended March 31, 2023, Decathlon India’s gross sales have been at Rs 3,995 crore, registering a 37 per cent progress.

“We want a good rhythm of (opening) 10 stores per year. We are really accelerating online at the moment and positioning ourselves digitally because of the convenience element,” he mentioned, including apart from massive format shops, Decathlon can also be engaged on small shops in huge cities.

These new shops may very well be smaller shops between 1,000 to 2,000 sq. meters or may be massive expertise shops unfold throughout 4,000 sq. meters, with a much bigger play space and different facilities.

“We have two in Bengaluru at the moment but we feel that in cities like Mumbai and Delhi, we should follow that kind of concept,” he added.

The main sports activities retailer additionally believes it has a task to play by encouraging extra individuals in the direction of sports activities and making a market in India.

Decathlon, which competes with main athleisure manufacturers similar to Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Puma and Asics within the Indian market, is at present working round 100 shops throughout codecs.

Regarding the potential of the Indian market, Dykes mentioned India has a excessive variety of younger individuals in its demography, who’re sports activities as a profession choice. Moreover, there are some huge Indian cities similar to Mumbai, whose GDP is anticipated to be broadly equal to international locations like Romania. “We would like to treat these cities like a country,” the CEO mentioned.

Moreover, cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata and so forth comply with totally different sorts of sports activities passions. For instance, in cities like Hyderabad Badminton is widespread, whereas operating is choosing up in Delhi. Similarly, Mumbai and Kolkata have totally different sports activities passions.

Over home sourcing, Dykes mentioned Decathlon plans to extend it to 90 to 95 per cent.

“We put a vision to get there in about five years by 2028,” mentioned Dykes, who earlier led the India enterprise of Decathlon as its CEO there.

The firm is growing its accessibility and dealing on the worth chain with extra ‘sustainable parts’ for the Indian market, which is price-sensitive.

On Tuesday, Decathlon launched a model new id and mentioned it’s deploying a brand new technique steeped in its new function, ‘Move People Through the Wonders of Sport’.

Speaking on the press meet, Barbara Martin Coppola, Global CEO, Decathlon mentioned, “Anchored to this new purpose, we have created a new strategy to concretely evolve many aspects of our business. This includes recreating our customer experience, accelerating the movement towards sustainability, and modernising our company end-to-end.”

She added that the model construction can also be evolving to mirror its new id as a worldwide, multi-specialist sports activities model.