Campus Activewear appoints boAt’s former CFO Rakesh Thakur as its new finance chief

DELHI: Footwear companies rarely make headlines for their finance appointments, but Campus Activewear has just made one worth noticing. India’s largest omnichannel sports and athleisure footwear brand has appointed Rakesh Thakur as chief financial officer, handing him a seat among the company’s key managerial personnel and, more pointedly, a mandate to tighten financial governance and capital efficiency as the business scales.

Thakur is not a rookie hire. He arrives with close to 23 years across some of India’s sharpest consumer businesses, most recently as group chief financial officer at boAt, where he worked alongside the founders, chief executive and board to shape financial and strategic direction ahead of the company’s public market ambitions. At boAt he is credited with driving profitable growth, lifting EBITDA, strengthening cash flow and working capital, cutting debt and tightening governance, precisely the toolkit a listed footwear brand wants as it moves from rapid expansion to disciplined scale. Before boAt, Thakur held senior roles at Hindustan Unilever and GSK Consumer Healthcare, working on finance transformation, business restructuring and supply chain strategy, with earlier stints at Samsung India and PepsiCo India rounding out a career built entirely inside large consumer businesses. Along the way he picked up the Unilever Global Recognition for the GSK-HUL virtual merger and the GSK ISC chief executive excellence award.

The timing of the appointment is not incidental. Campus posted revenue of Rs 385.2 crore in the June 2026 quarter, up 12.2 per cent year on year, with sales volumes rising 11.7 per cent to 57.1 million pairs. Profit after tax grew faster still, up 17.7 per cent to Rs 26.1 crore, a sign the company is protecting margins even as cost pressures bite. Women’s and kids’ categories are emerging as the newer growth engines alongside the core business, broadening the base rather than leaning on a single line.

Nikhil Aggarwal, chief executive of Campus Activewear, called Thakur’s mix of financial leadership and consumer business experience valuable as the company enters what he termed its next phase of scale, adding that Campus was “delighted to welcome Rakesh to the Campus leadership team.” Thakur, for his part, struck a similarly forward-looking note: “Campus has built a strong and differentiated position in India’s sports and athleisure footwear market, backed by a strong brand, growing consumer relevance and a robust omnichannel presence.” He said his focus would be on “accelerating sustainable growth across revenue and margins, while strengthening financial discipline, improving capital efficiency and building scalable processes,” while keeping an eye on long-term shareholder value.

The appointment lands on a genuinely sizeable operating base. Campus runs seven manufacturing facilities across India with installed annual assembly capacity of 30.7 million pairs, and reaches over 31,000 geographically mapped retailers across more than 850 districts through 260-plus distributors, backed by an internal sales force of over 220 employees covering roughly 17,000 of those retailers directly. Its e-commerce revenue has compounded at more than 34 per cent a year between fiscal 2021 and March 2026, sold through Flipkart, Amazon, Ajio and Myntra alongside its own site, and the brand now operates over 305 exclusive outlets across company-owned and franchise formats. With roughly 17 per cent share of India’s branded sports and athleisure footwear market, a segment still dominated by international names, Campus is betting that a finance chief who has already taken one consumer brand through hypergrowth into public-market discipline is exactly what its next stretch requires.