Inside Unrack’s bet on building elite sports equipment in India
India’s elite athletes train with equipment that is meant to be replaced. A Bengaluru-based manufacturer is betting that coaches and not procurement will change that logic
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 along a wall like surplus inventory. They were kept as backups because the bars in use at the training centre kept failing under elite training loads. When they fail, backups come out.
This is India’s sports infrastructure in miniature. High-performance centres get equipped with 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 since leaving Aquatics GB trying to change that calculation. Unrack, the company she founded with her father in Peenya, Bengaluru’s industrial sprawl, makes barbells and weight plates at roughly 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. Breaking into a system where permanently breaking bars are considered normal requires more than better engineering.
Market reports estimate India’s gym equipment market is roughly $630 million (about Rs 5,000 crore) in 2024. Most domestic brands are not manufacturers at all, but importers reselling Chinese white-label products. The few companies that do manufacture compete almost entirely on price rather than precision.
Gopal is betting that there is space in that market for domestic manufacturing that meets international standards without international price tags.
