New Delhi, July 11 -- Harmanpreet Singh Sandhu was 15 when the sneaker bug bit him. "Back in 2014-15, I used to consume a lot of YouTube and that's where I saw people wearing Yeezys and talking about how comfortable they were," recalls Sandhu, 24, a content creator. And so when adidas released that line in India in 2016-17, the Mumbai resident remembers camping out at a store to get himself a pair of the desert boots. A decade and 40-45 pairs of sneakers later, the love has only got stronger. "Once you are in, you are in it for life. Then it becomes about, what's the next sneaker you are going to buy?"

Cut to 2025 and everyone's wearing sneakers, the hype driven by younger millennials and Gen Z who have the wherewithal to splurge on the ...