Running Revolution in India

Running is steadily becoming one of India’s favorite sports. Pick any city or town, and there’s a high probability you’ll find at least two or three running events. Corporates, schools, civic bodies, NGOs, and residential societies are all organizing runs. Almost everyone keen on promoting health and wellness is getting involved in running, and people are participating in the running events in large numbers. The shift in mindset is so definitive that running experts in India firmly believe we are amidst a massive Running Revolution!

Loads of running events and loads of runners

The numbers support this belief. There are more than 1,600 known running events in India, ranging from local 5K runs to prestigious city marathons like the Tata Mumbai Marathon. The estimated number of registered runners in India is around 2.5 million. This may seem small for a country of India’s scale, but in 2019, this number was just about 1 million. In just five years, the running population has grown 2.5 times.

Tata Mumbai Marathon – India’s marquee running event, had a staggerring 55,000+ participants in 2024. These participation numbers are comparable (only in terms of total scale & not considering the distance category) with other reputed city marathons like London Marathon and Berlin Marathon.

Sizeable scale yet astronomical head-room

Let’s put India’s running population in a global context:

Country	No. of Runners (Million)	Runners as % of Population
USA	50	15%
UK	6.2	10%
China	7.3	0.5%
India	2.5	0.2%

Only 0.2% of India’s population runs, which compares poorly to the 15% and 10% in the USA and UK. But the good news is that India is just getting started. In the next 10 years, India will likely have more runners than the UK, even if that’s still only 0.5% to 1% of the total population. India is a giant just warming up. A few decades down the line, India could have the largest number of runners in the world. There’s absolutely no stopping this giant!

Sponsorship galore

There’s also money in running. Running events in India attract significant sponsorships. Anil and Vivek Singh, founders of ProCam International, which organizes marquee events like the Tata Mumbai Marathon, Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon, and TCS 10K, estimate the total sponsorship amount for running events in India to be around INR 800 crore (USD 100 million). At an aggregate level, this is quite a substantial amount. The title sponsorships for marquee running events beat other more followed sports like Kabaddi or Badminton.

Running events take effort to organize but are profitable due to the number of sponsorships they attract. This is a significant reason behind the mushrooming of running events across the country. NEB Sports, a Bangalore-based event organizing company, manages more than 20 major running events nationwide, including the Wipro Bengaluru Marathon, Stadium Runs (Mumbai, Bengaluru), and New Delhi Marathon.

Growth for the brands

Global brands like adidas, Nike, Puma, and Asics have seen spectacular growth in their India business, with each reporting over 40% yearly growth since the pandemic. Running is the top sport for each of these brands, and India is one of their top priority markets for future growth.

Runners all around

While there are more than enough reasons to believe in India’s running revolution, here is a simple test to sample the flavor of this revolution:

• Look around your circle of friends and acquaintances. How many of them are running regularly or participating in running events? Contrast this with the number a decade ago.
• Lace up your shoes and take a stroll (or run) around the nearest park in your hometown. How many people do you see running or jogging? Contrast this with the number a decade ago.

Long live the running revolution in India!

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If you have read this far, thank you! If you found this note engaging/helpful, I have a small request for you. Please share this within your network and promote the awesome sport of running without your circle of influence. For feedback or more inputs, please DM me at aashutosh[dot]chaudhari[at]gmail[dot]com. I will surely get back to you.