Virat Kohli’s Launches One8 Shoe Brand

Most athletes who lend their name to a sneaker approve the third prototype and head off for lunch. Kohli treated every rejected version like a failed innings at Lord’s. It took eighteen attempts before he finally signed off, and when he did, he named the shoe after the only number that has ever truly belonged to him: 18. That single detail tells you everything about what Virat Kohli’s One8 shoe brand has become — not a celebrity cash-grab, but a serious attempt to build India’s first global high-performance sports label.

Three weeks on from the splashy New Delhi premiere, the story has moved well past a single shoe. As of late June 2026, One8 has become the centre of a fast-expanding sports-and-wellness empire — complete with a corporate buyout, a second Bollywood-cricket power-couple stake, and a brand-new yoga line. Here’s the full story, brought up to date.

A childhood dream that crossed the boundary

For the biggest names in world sport, a signature shoe is a rite of passage. LeBron James has one. Rafael Nadal has one. Kohli, by his own admission, always wanted one too. The difference is that he refused to simply rent his face to a foreign giant and collect a cheque.

In May 2025, Kohli walked away from Test cricket after a stellar career — 9,230 runs across 123 matches, 30 centuries, and a stint as one of India’s most combative captains. That farewell to whites freed up something else: the energy and obsession that defined his red-ball game could now be poured into building something of his own.

He ended his long-running Puma association — reportedly turning down a renewal worth around ₹300 crore over eight years — and backed a homegrown venture instead. This was not a logo slapped onto someone else’s product. It was Kohli in the engine room.

The deal behind the brand: Kohli, Agilitas and a ₹40 crore bet

Here’s the corporate backbone many fans missed in the noise of the launch. One8 is no longer simply “Kohli’s brand” in the licensing sense — it’s now owned by Agilitas Sports, the company led by former Puma India Managing Director Abhishek Ganguly.

Earlier in 2026, Kohli agreed to sell the One8 brand to Agilitas and, in the same move, invested around ₹40 crore of his own money to join the company as an investor and co-founder of the One8 vertical. He’d first picked up a 1.49% stake in Agilitas during an earlier funding round. In other words, Kohli didn’t cash out and walk away — he sold the label into a bigger platform and bought into that platform’s future.

That distinction matters. For years, celebrity brands in India have run as licensing deals — a star lends their name, a corporation runs everything, profits are split. By selling One8 into Agilitas and investing alongside Ganguly, whom he’s known since the 2017 Puma deal, Kohli signalled he wanted a real, durable business rather than just to monetise his fame..

Seventeen rejections and the shoe called 18

The development story has already become brand folklore, and for good reason. The brief was not to tweak an existing silhouette. It was to engineer a cricket shoe from scratch for the brutal realities of the modern game: explosive sprints between wickets, sudden directional changes in the field, and the punishing impact loads of fast bowling.

Kohli reportedly rejected 17 different prototypes before approving the 18th version, underscoring the attention to detail that has characterised his approach both on and off the field. When the perfected model finally arrived, the name chose itself. 18 is his jersey number, his identity, and — fittingly — the IPL edition in which he finally lifted the trophy with Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

The engineering matches the obsession. Built leveraging Mochiko’s manufacturing muscle, the flagship cricket shoe features a lightweight spike plate tuned for rapid acceleration and aggressive grip on turf and outfield, paired with an energy-return midsole built to absorb the shocks of heavy running and fast bowling. It is performance gear first, marketing story second.

The ₹9,230 price tag that tells a story

If you want a single object that captures the brand’s entire philosophy, look at the price sticker on the Seam XVIII Signature “Test Red.”

The shoe draws its design from the traditional red cricket ball — deep crimson tones, prominent seam-style stitching, white detailing. And it is priced at ₹9,230, the exact number of Test runs Kohli scored before retiring from the format. The original MRP was set at ₹10,000, a nod to the 10,000-run milestone he fell 770 runs short of.

It is a quietly poignant piece of brand-building: a tribute to a chapter he closed, and an acknowledgement of the one mountain he never quite summited. At the launch, host Danish Sait teased Kohli about whether he’d return to Test cricket just to push his run tally higher. Kohli, firmly, ruled it out.

How the launch range is priced:

Product	Price	Category
Seam XVIII Signature (Test Red)	₹9,230	Legacy Piece
Seam XVIII (OG / Pavilion)	From ₹6,999	Lifestyle
Cover Drive 18 Pro / 18 X	₹13,999	Cricket spikes
Boom Rush	——	Multi-activity trainer

With pricing positioned firmly in the premium segment, One8 is being set up to compete with athlete-led labels worldwide. This is not budget footwear — it is India staking a claim in a category long dominated by Nike, Adidas, and Puma.

In that sense, One8 is priced and positioned less like merchandise and more like a futures bet — which is exactly how serious cricket fans on a sports exchange think about Kohli: a long-term blue-chip, not a short-odds trade. 

 

Kohli’s brand power still moves markets. Pre-bookings sold out in minutes, and launch-day search interest spiked the way it does when odds shift sharply on an exchange betting app, like Flash555, before a Kohli innings, a reminder that his name remains one of Indian sport’s most liquid assets. 

GET ID

The launch built like an event, not an ad

One8 didn’t simply put shoes on a website. The brand co-created a launch format with District, Zomato’s ticketing platform, that fused buying a product with attending a spectacle — what the companies called India’s first “access commerce” drop.

Fans across cities — Delhi, Goa, Chennai, Jammu, Indore, Mysore, Panipat, Lucknow — pre-booked pairs to earn entry to the One8 Global Premiere, held on 21 June 2026 at Yashobhoomi in New Delhi. More than 5,000 people gathered, and the brand dubbed them the “Founding 5000” — early buyers written into the brand’s origin story. As Ganguly framed it: most launches introduce a product; this one introduced a belief.

The newest twist: Anushka Sharma and One8 Yoga

The freshest chapter in the One8 story isn’t about Kohli at all — it’s about his wife.

In late May 2026, Anushka Sharma acquired a minority stake in Agilitas and signed on to co-develop One8 Yoga, a brand-new yoga and wellness activewear line — which debuted on 21 June, International Day of Yoga, the same date as the footwear premiere. “What drew me in was the intent, the ambition and the opportunity to build something meaningful,” she wrote, confirming the investment.

It turns One8 into a genuine family enterprise and pushes the brand beyond cricket cleats. Agilitas is betting two of India’s most influential public figures can anchor a wellness universe — performance footwear under Kohli, mindful-living activewear under Sharma — in a fast-growing athleisure market. Ganguly confirmed the partnership but declined to disclose financials.

“Never Done”: the ambition behind the brand

The tagline is “Never Done,” lifted straight from Kohli’s competitive DNA. He told the premiere audience that he is most alive in moments others have written off — the matches everyone assumes are lost.

That mindset now drives a strikingly large plan. The company has spoken of expanding One8’s footprint across 50 countries, positioning it as a home-grown international brand built to compete globally, with products manufactured in India.

Perhaps the most telling line of the night was Kohli’s vision for the brand’s future. He said he wants One8 to eventually outgrow him entirely — the brand should outgrow all of us, he said, and if it can do that in 20 years, he’d love to be completely forgotten. It is a rare ambition for a man whose name is the brand’s biggest asset: to build something so good that the founder becomes a footnote.

Why this launch matters

For decades, “going global” was a line in an Indian pitch deck rather than a starting plan. What makes One8 different is that international scale isn’t the dream for “someday” — it’s the day-one blueprint. A made-in-India brand, owned by a vertically integrated platform, backed by a cricket icon and now a Bollywood star, priced and engineered to compete with the biggest names in the world.

Whether One8 reaches all 50 countries is a story still being written. But as of June 2026, the intent is unmistakable. Virat Kohli’s One8 shoe brand was never really just about sneakers stitched like cricket balls. It was the opening move in a bet that Indian ambition no longer needs to shrink itself to fit a global stage — and Kohli has put his name, his number, his run tally, and ₹40 crore on the line to prove it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who owns One8 now?

As of 2026, One8 is owned by Agilitas Sports, led by former Puma India MD Abhishek Ganguly. Virat Kohli sold the One8 brand to Agilitas and invested around ₹40 crore to join as an investor and co-founder of the One8 vertical, rather than running it as a standalone licensed label.

Why is the One8 Test Red shoe priced at ₹9,230?

The figure mirrors the exact number of runs Kohli scored in his Test career (9,230) before retiring from the format in May 2025. The shoe’s original MRP was ₹10,000, a nod to the 10,000-run milestone he fell short of.

What is One8 Yoga and what is Anushka Sharma’s role?

One8 Yoga is a new yoga and wellness activewear line under the One8 brand, launched on 21 June 2026 (International Day of Yoga). Anushka Sharma acquired a minority stake in Agilitas and is co-developing the range, expanding One8 from performance sportswear into the wellness market.

Why is the flagship shoe named “18”?

Eighteen is Kohli’s jersey number, and he reportedly rejected the first 17 prototypes before approving the 18th. It also references the 18th edition of the IPL, in which he won the title with Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

How much do One8 shoes cost?

The signature Seam XVIII Test Red is ₹9,230, lifestyle variants start around ₹6,999, and the Cover Drive 18 cricket spikes are priced at ₹13,999 — placing the range firmly in the premium segment.