10 Sports Personalities Redefining India's Sporting Story

Sports in India are no longer defined by a handful of disciplines. Sportspersons from cricket, badminton, wrestling, football, weightlifting and table tennis are winning medals, breaking records and reshaping the country's sporting culture, often while the headlines are still being written.

They have inspired millions with their perseverance, challenged long held stereotypes, and proved that excellence can emerge from every corner of the nation.

People Who Matter looks at ten such sports personalities whose current seasons, comebacks and milestones continue to define what Indian sport looks like right now.

1. Jasprit Bumrah

Jasprit Bumrah has become the defining figure in India's rise as a fast bowling powerhouse, and this year made that case louder than ever. At the 2026 T20 World Cup, Bumrah took 14 wickets across the tournament, including a match winning 4 for 15 in the final against New Zealand, as India became the first team to win the men's T20 World Cup three times and the first to successfully defend the title.

The campaign also pushed Bumrah past R Ashwin to become India's leading wicket taker in T20 World Cup history, a record he continued to extend through the tournament. It followed his earlier heroics at the 2024 edition, where 15 wickets and an economy of 4.17 won him the Player of the Tournament award.

Off the field, Bumrah has moved from brand face to equity holder. After three years as the ambassador for sustainable luggage brand uppercase, he converted that relationship into a direct investment in the company, becoming a co-creator on a line of travel and gym gear built for athletes, part of a broader wave of Indian cricketers turning endorsement deals into ownership stakes.

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2. Lakshya Sen

Lakshya Sen heads into the biggest month of his career on home soil. The BWF World Championships return to India for the first time in 17 years, running in New Delhi from August 17 to 23, and Sen enters as the 14th seed and one of the host country's biggest medal hopes.

His path so far has been built on steady, high level results rather than one breakout year. A bronze at the 2021 World Championships, gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and a gold at the Thomas Cup the same year established him as one of India's most consistent singles players, and he came within a match of an Olympic medal at Paris 2024, finishing fourth.

Commercially, Sen has kept his off court footprint deliberately narrow, built on endorsements and prize money rather than the startup investments several of his peers have taken on, a measured approach for an athlete still just 24 and mid-career.

3. Manika Batra

Manika Batra remains one of the most influential figures Indian table tennis has produced, and continues to be one of the country's most consistent performers on the international circuit, holding her position as India's second highest ranked woman in the latest ITTF standings.

That consistency sits on top of a career built on breaking new ground. She picked up a racket at four, chose competitive table tennis over modelling opportunities as a teenager, and won four medals, including two golds, at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, becoming the first Indian woman to win the Games singles title.

At the Paris 2024 Olympics, she became the first Indian table tennis player to reach the singles round of 16, and her career best ranking of World No. 24 remains the highest achieved by an Indian woman in singles. In August 2025, she went beyond a standard endorsement and joined fitness brand Boldfit as an athlete investor with equity, part of the brand's push into sports beyond cricket, and continues to compete on the WTT tour, including a recent appearance at the WTT Champions Yokohama in August 2026.

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4. Mirabai Chanu

Mirabai Chanu delivered India's first gold medal of the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, lifting a total of 190kg in the women's 48kg category to complete a hat trick of Commonwealth gold medals, following her titles in 2018 and 2022. The win broke Games records across snatch, clean and jerk and total, and came 22kg clear of the rest of the field.

Hailing from Manipur, Chanu rose from humble beginnings to become one of India's most celebrated athletes. After failing to register a successful lift at the Rio 2016 Olympics, she rebuilt her career with a World Championship title in 2017 and an Olympic silver at Tokyo 2020.

Unlike several of her peers, Chanu's off field ambitions are institutional rather than commercial. Alongside ambassador roles with Amway's Nutrilite range and I-League club NEROCA FC, she has spoken of plans to open a weightlifting academy in Manipur, a way of channelling her career back into the state that shaped it. She has been honoured with the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna, the Padma Shri and the Arjuna Award.

5. PV Sindhu

PV Sindhu is entering the BWF World Championships in New Delhi with fresh momentum. In July 2026, she won the Japan Open, beating home favourite Akane Yamaguchi in straight games to claim her first BWF Super 750 title and end a near two year wait for a tour title, her first outside India since the 2022 Singapore Open.

That win capped a long climb back for a player who has transformed badminton from a niche sport into a mainstream Indian sporting ambition. She announced herself globally with bronze at the 2013 World Championships, became the first Indian woman to win an individual Olympic medal with silver at Rio 2016, and added Tokyo 2020 bronze to become the first Indian woman with two Olympic medals.

Sindhu has also built one of the more active investment portfolios among Indian athletes, with stakes in more than a dozen companies spanning quick commerce platform KiranaPro, wellness brand Hoop, biofortified food company Greenday, used car marketplace Spinny and aerospace component manufacturer Azad Engineering. In 2019, she became the first Indian to win the BWF World Championships outright, and with the tournament now on home soil, she heads in as one of India's strongest medal hopes.

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6. Shubman Gill

Shubman Gill has firmly established himself as the face of India's next cricketing era. Appointed Test captain at 25 ahead of India's 2025 tour of England, he answered the challenge in his very first series, scoring 754 runs in five Tests, including four centuries and a top score of 269, to finish as the leading run scorer on either side.

That performance earned him the Polly Umrigar Award for Best International Cricketer at the BCCI's Naman Awards in March 2026, his second time winning the honour. He also captains India's ODI side, having led the team to the 2025 Champions Trophy title, and continues to be one of the most watched batters in the IPL, where his form for Gujarat Titans in the 2026 season pushed him past 600 runs.

Gill's business interests have grown alongside his batting. He co-founded cricket focused gym chain Drive Fitt with actor Preity Zinta, backed US based venture capital firm Vicus Ventures, and in 2025 joined a Rs 100 crore funding round for small-town retail chain SuperK, signalling an early and deliberate interest in venture investing.

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7. Smriti Mandhana

Smriti Mandhana capped an extraordinary run in early 2026 by leading Royal Challengers Bengaluru to their second Women's Premier League title in three years, top scoring the tournament with 377 runs and playing the key hand in a record chase of 204 in the final against Delhi Capitals.

It continued a stretch that has made her one of the most defining faces of women's cricket anywhere in the world. In 2024, she set a women's international record with 1,602 runs in a calendar year, including a record 763 T20I runs, and in 2025 she was part of the Indian team that won its first ever Women's Cricket World Cup.

Mandhana's business interests have grown alongside women's cricket's commercial rise. She holds a stake in Ayurvedic wellness brand Neem Ayu, co-owns SM-18, a sports themed cafe in her hometown of Sangli run with her family, and has more recently moved beyond standard endorsements into a co-creator and investor role with a consumer lifestyle brand. In 2026, she also became the only Indian named in TIME's 100 Most Influential People in Sports.

8. Sunil Chhetri

Sunil Chhetri's story closed its most recent chapter in November 2025, when he retired from international football for a second time, this time for good, finishing with 95 goals in 157 appearances, the most by any Indian and the fourth highest tally in international football history, behind only Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Ali Daei.

The number undersells what he meant to Indian football. He made his debut in 2005 and carried the national team through nearly two decades in which the sport struggled for mainstream attention, leading India to four SAFF Championship titles and the AFC Challenge Cup in 2008 along the way.

Chhetri's off field ventures have stayed close to endorsements rather than ownership, with a long standing portfolio that includes Puma, Skechers, Flipkart and Pintola. Unlike several younger teammates, he has not taken a public equity stake in a named company, a reflection of a career built more on longevity than diversification.

9. Vinesh Phogat

Vinesh Phogat's story has taken several turns since her heartbreak at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where she was disqualified from the gold medal bout for being 100 grams over the weight limit after becoming the first Indian woman wrestler to reach an Olympic wrestling final. She retired immediately after, then reversed that decision in December 2025, announcing her intention to compete at the LA 2028 Olympics and shifting up to the 57kg category.

Her comeback has not been straightforward. Eligibility questions tied to anti doping return protocols followed her into 2026, and despite competing again domestically, she was ultimately left out of contention for the 2026 Asian Games after the Wrestling Federation of India's selection criteria closed the door on her comeback bid.

Her most significant investment has been in the next generation rather than a business. After the Haryana government awarded her Rs 4 crore in recognition of her Paris performance, Phogat announced in 2025 that she would use the full amount to build a world class sports academy for young athletes, a landmark commitment she has described as repaying the support her own career received. Born in Haryana into the celebrated Phogat wrestling family, she remains one of the strongest voices for athletes' rights in Indian sport, with her sights still set on Los Angeles.

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10. Virat Kohli

Virat Kohli remains one of the most consequential figures in Indian cricket, even as his role has narrowed by design. Having retired from T20Is after India's 2024 World Cup win and from Test cricket in 2025, he now plays only ODIs, a format he continues to dominate well past the age when most batters slow down.

He returned in July 2026 for India's ODI series in England after recovering from a hamstring injury picked up in the IPL 2026 final, and closed in on Sachin Tendulkar's record for the most runs by an Indian in India versus England ODI history during the series. With more than 27,000 international runs and over 14,000 in ODIs alone, he remains the first player to cross 50 ODI centuries.

Off the field, Kohli has built one of the most extensive business portfolios of any Indian athlete. In 2026, he turned down a reported Rs 300 crore extension from Puma to instead invest around Rs 40 crore in Agilitas Sports, the company now scaling his One8 label into an independent sportswear brand, alongside existing stakes in fashion label WROGN, plant based food company Blue Tribe, Digit Insurance, football club FC Goa and electric powerboat racing team Team Blue Rising.

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This story is part of People Who Matter's Independence Day Special series, launching alongside our platform this August. Look out for more specials celebrating the people shaping India's culture, business and public life.

All facts, figures, records and business details mentioned in this article have been sourced from publicly available reports, official statements and verified media coverage, current as of the date of publication. Where possible, sources have been linked within the article. People Who Matter is not responsible for any changes to these details after publication.