Bengaluru: PUMA India has elevated Deven Deshpande to lead, sports marketing, from October 2026, handing him the brand’s sports marketing charter in India. Deshpande shared the update on LinkedIn, saying he is “excited to embark on a new journey.”
An insider’s rise
The appointment is the latest step in a 7.5-year run at the sportswear major, and a reminder that long internal careers can end in leadership roles when they are built across functions.
Deshpande joined PUMA as a summer intern in May 2018, working on retail initiatives aimed at gyms and sports academies. He went full time in 2019 after a management trainee stint and moved through growth hacking, e-commerce and social and influencer marketing roles.
- 2018: Summer intern, retail key initiatives.
- 2019: Management trainee, then assistant manager, growth hacking; worked on the Virat Kohli one8 x PUMA launch on Myntra.
- 2022-2023: Manager, growth hacking and key account manager for PUMA’s B2B wholesale e-commerce on Myntra.
- 2024-2025: Senior manager, growth hacking, owning P&L for the Myntra partnership and scaling the white sneakers range.
- 2026: Senior manager and then lead, social and influencer marketing, before taking the sports marketing mandate.
Before PUMA, Deshpande’s career included technology and education roles at Larsen and Toubro Infotech and Choose To Thinq, a background that explains his comfort with data and audience engagement.
Why this move matters
Sports marketing is no longer only about athlete associations and big-ticket sponsorships. At PUMA India, the role now sits at the intersection of sport, social, influencer and commerce, and Deshpande’s profile matches that shift.
Before this role, he directed P&L for PUMA’s Myntra partnership and scaled the white sneakers range. He then built rosters and scaled an influencer and content partner ecosystem across lifestyle, fitness and sports. That gives him both commercial and creator-side experience, a combination modern sports marketers need when every athlete story also has to work in a feed and a cart.
The pattern is useful for marketing professionals. Deshpande describes a data-driven approach to combining creativity, consumer insights and commercial objectives. A marketer who can speak in both brand and revenue terms is often the one considered for broader mandates.
What to watch
Deshpande’s next test will be to connect PUMA India’s teamsport, sportstyle, and running and training units into one sports marketing story, while keeping the performance energy that his e-commerce and influencer roles were built on. For teams, the cue is to develop talent across channels before a leadership seat opens, rather than waiting for a single specialism to be enough.
Source: Indian Television Dot Com
