Inside Unrack’s bet on building elite sports equipment in India
Olympic-grade barbells, coach-led adoption and a market accustomed to buying cheap. Bengaluru-based Unrack is trying to change how Indian sport buys equipment
While researching India’s elite sports equipment market in 2023, Sahana Gopal visited a national training facility. An official showed her his office. Twenty barbells sat wrapped and unused, lined up against a wall. They were kept as backups because the bars in use at the training centre kept failing under elite training loads. Each time a bar broke, another was unwrapped.
This is India’s sports infrastructure in miniature. High-performance centres buy gear that cannot withstand high-performance training. At a Tamil Nadu sports science centre built for state athletes, the strength and conditioning coordinator told Gopal he could not load more than 100 kilograms on the barbells because they would break. The facility had been outfitted on a tight budget, with procurement prioritising cost over durability.
Gopal has spent the past 18 months trying to change that calculation. Unrack, the company she founded with her father in Peenya, Bengaluru’s industrial district, makes barbells and weight plates for about a third of the price of Olympic-standard imports, using aerospace-grade materials.
A leading Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise, the Reliance Foundation, the Mumbai Cricket Association, and Haryana Steelers, the Pro Kabaddi League champions, use the equipment. But better engineering alone will not change a procurement system built around the lowest price.
Market reports estimate India’s gym equipment market at $630 million (about Rs 5,000 crore) in 2024. Most domestic brands are not manufacturers. They are importers reselling Chinese white-label products. The few companies that do manufacture compete almost entirely on price rather than precision.
Gopal sees room for an Indian manufacturer that can meet international standards without international price tags.
