Former Croma VP Sahil Kansal joins Agilitas as Sr. Director as the sportswear platform charts an ambitious rollout comprising 10 SportsYard flagships, 100–200 Lotto outlets and around 100 One8 stores…
Agilitas Sports has strengthened its retail leadership with the appointment of Sahil Kansal as Sr. Director, bringing in a veteran retail property and expansion professional from Croma at a time when the sportswear and lifestyle platform is preparing for an ambitious physical retail rollout. Kansal moves to Agilitas after more than 12 years with Croma, where he most recently served as VP – Property Development & Design, and will now play a key role in spearheading the expansion of Agilitas’ growing portfolio, including One8, HOKA, Lotto, SportsYard and The KIT. The appointment comes against an ambitious retail roadmap that envisages around 300 stores across formats, including 10 SportsYard flagship destinations, between 100 and 200 Lotto outlets and around 100 One8 storefronts.
A Retail Expansion Veteran Joins Agilitas
Kansal brings close to two decades of experience across retail expansion, property strategy, catchment development, store development, franchising and business development. During his 12-year-plus journey at Croma, he moved through several increasingly senior responsibilities, beginning with store development and subsequently taking charge of property and catchment strategy before becoming Head of Property, Head of Property, Legal & Franchising and eventually VP – Property Development & Design. His responsibilities involved identifying strategic markets and locations, assessing market potential and customer flows, evaluating commercial feasibility, developing long-term expansion plans and ensuring that store-level economics remained viable.
That experience is particularly relevant to Agilitas at this stage, as the company moves from establishing its sportswear ecosystem to building the physical retail architecture through which its brands will reach consumers at scale. The transition also represents an interesting shift for Kansal—from one of India’s largest specialist electronics retail networks to a rapidly evolving sports and lifestyle platform where brand experience, consumer engagement and retail format will be critical components of growth.
300 Stores: Agilitas’ Big Retail Bet
The timing of Kansal’s move is significant because Agilitas is attempting something considerably broader than simply building a network of exclusive brand outlets. Founded by Abhishek Ganguly, Atul Bajaj and Amit Prabhu, the company has been building an integrated sports ecosystem spanning manufacturing, product development, brands and retail. Its portfolio brings together its manufacturing platform, the long-term Lotto licence, One8, the multi-brand SportsYard proposition and other consumer-facing businesses, creating an ecosystem in which different brands and formats can address different consumer occasions and price points.
The proposed 300-store expansion gives this strategy a clear physical dimension. The plan comprises 10 SportsYard flagships, 100–200 Lotto outlets and around 100 One8 stores, creating a substantial retail network across multiple formats. The numbers are significant not only because of their scale, but because each proposition requires a different approach to location, store size, consumer profile, investment and productivity. The challenge for Agilitas will therefore be to scale rapidly without allowing the speed of expansion to dilute the differentiated positioning of its individual brands and formats.
From Sports Retail to Sports Experience
At the large-format end of the strategy is SportsYard, Agilitas’ multi-brand experiential sports retail concept, for which the company plans to develop 10 flagship destinations. The Bengaluru flagship has already established the broad direction of the format, combining a large retail environment with sporting and community experiences. Rather than positioning the store simply as a place to purchase sports products, SportsYard is designed as a destination where consumers can discover multiple brands and participate in the wider sporting ecosystem.
The proposition reflects a broader evolution in sports retail, where experience, community and engagement are becoming increasingly important alongside assortment and price. Sports consumers are not necessarily looking only for a transaction; they are increasingly looking for access to products, activities, communities and experiences that are connected to their sporting interests. SportsYard gives Agilitas an opportunity to bring those elements together under one roof while also creating a large-format platform through which multiple international and performance brands can reach consumers.
The challenge now is to take the SportsYard proposition to multiple markets while ensuring that its size and experience-led model remain commercially viable. This is where sophisticated property strategy and catchment understanding become particularly important.
Lotto’s India Play Gets a Bigger Physical Footprint
The second major component of the proposed rollout is Lotto. Agilitas holds the long-term licence for the Italian sports brand in India and is developing the brand across sportswear, footwear and athleisure. With plans for between 100 and 200 Lotto outlets, the brand could become one of the largest components of Agilitas’ physical retail network.
The opportunity is particularly interesting because Lotto brings established international sports heritage, while Agilitas brings local manufacturing, product development and market knowledge. The combination gives the company the ability to build an international sports brand with an India-focused operating and retail strategy. The proposed store network can also provide Lotto with significantly greater visibility as it competes for share in India’s expanding organised sportswear and athleisure market.
For Agilitas, the scale of the proposed Lotto rollout also means that location strategy will be critical. The brand will need to balance premium visibility with sustainable store economics, while determining the right mix of malls, high streets and other retail environments across India’s diverse markets.
One8: From Celebrity Equity to a Retail Brand
One8 represents another important pillar of the expansion. Developed with Virat Kohli, the brand has moved beyond the traditional celebrity endorsement model, with Kohli becoming an investor and co-creator of the business with Agilitas. The company has been developing One8 across performance and lifestyle categories and expanding its proposition into adjacent segments, including yoga and women’s performance.
The proposed network of around 100 One8 storefronts could mark a significant transition for the brand—from a predominantly awareness-led and distribution-driven proposition into a more visible physical retail brand with its own consumer environments. For a brand built around one of India’s most recognisable sporting personalities, physical retail provides an opportunity to translate that enormous awareness into a deeper and more consistent consumer experience.
The store network can also become an important bridge between One8’s digital consumer engagement and its physical brand experience. The challenge will be to ensure that the stores communicate One8’s performance credentials and lifestyle positioning rather than becoming simply another distribution channel.
Why Location Will Matter as Much as the Brand
Kansal’s background becomes particularly relevant when viewed against this expansion strategy. His career has centred on understanding not simply where a store can be opened, but whether a particular location can support the right consumer proposition and deliver sustainable economics. Catchment quality, customer movement, accessibility, competition, property costs, store size and expected productivity all become critical when a retail business moves from a handful of strategic locations to a network running into hundreds of stores.
For Agilitas, the challenge is further complicated by the fact that SportsYard, Lotto and One8 are fundamentally different propositions and will not necessarily require the same location strategy, store size or investment model. A SportsYard flagship is designed around scale and experience and therefore requires a very different real-estate proposition from a One8 store or a Lotto outlet. The ability to identify the right market, format and property for each brand could ultimately determine how effectively the 300-store ambition translates into profitable retail growth.
Kansal’s experience in evaluating market potential, customer flows, commercial feasibility and long-term business plans therefore gives Agilitas a specialised capability at a critical stage of its expansion. The objective is not simply to add stores, but to create a network in which every location has a clear role in the consumer journey and can generate sustainable returns.
Building the Sportswear Ecosystem from Factory to Store
Agilitas’ retail strategy is also backed by a manufacturing backbone. Through Mochiko Shoes and its broader manufacturing capabilities, the company has been building an integrated platform that connects production with brand development and consumer-facing businesses. This vertical integration is an important part of Agilitas’ larger ambition to build an India-born sportswear platform with capabilities extending from manufacturing and product development to branding, distribution and retail.
As the consumer businesses scale, the ability to coordinate these different parts of the value chain could become an important competitive advantage, particularly in a market where speed, product availability, assortment and pricing are becoming increasingly important. The combination of manufacturing capabilities and consumer-facing brands also allows Agilitas to approach the market from both ends—building products and capabilities at the back end while simultaneously creating consumer demand and retail presence at the front end.
This is increasingly relevant as Indian sportswear moves into a more sophisticated phase. The opportunity is no longer restricted to selling international brands through traditional distribution. Indian companies are now building their own brands, investing in product development, creating specialised retail formats and attempting to capture a larger share of the value chain.
The Next Battle: Building the Right Retail Network
Agilitas’ growth ambition has been supported by investment into areas including product research and development, technology, manufacturing, retail expansion, people and brand building. The proposed 300-store roadmap consequently represents a broader transition in the company’s strategy—from creating individual businesses and brands to scaling them through a much larger distribution and retail network.
For the Indian sportswear and athleisure market, the move is significant because competition is increasingly moving beyond individual brands. The market is becoming a contest between ecosystems that can combine product, brand, distribution, digital engagement, community and physical experience. International sportswear majors have built extensive retail networks over decades, while Indian businesses are now developing their own combinations of manufacturing strength, celebrity-led brand building, digital commerce and organised retail.
Agilitas is attempting to bring many of these capabilities together under one platform. Kansal’s appointment therefore comes at an important inflection point. His transition from Croma to Agilitas represents a move from helping scale a large specialist retail network to helping construct the physical retail architecture of an emerging sports and lifestyle ecosystem.
The ambition is sizeable: 10 SportsYard flagships, 100–200 Lotto outlets and around 100 One8 stores, alongside the company’s wider portfolio and retail initiatives. If executed effectively, the expansion could give Agilitas one of India’s more substantial home-grown physical sportswear retail platforms while allowing its brands to move closer to consumers across India’s major cities and emerging markets.
Ultimately, the next phase of India’s sportswear competition will not be determined only by who has the strongest product or the biggest brand. It will increasingly be about who can create the most compelling and commercially sustainable physical-plus-digital consumer journey. With Sahil Kansal now joining its leadership team, Agilitas is adding seasoned retail-development expertise to an ecosystem that is already bringing together brands, manufacturing and consumer experience—and preparing to take that ecosystem to a much larger physical footprint.
