Jalandhar is one of India’s biggest sports goods hubs and it is once again in focus and this time for something every cricket fan notices but rarely thinks about: helmets worn by top players like Virat Kohli.
Along with Meerut, Jalandhar carries a major share of India’s sports manufacturing industry and nearly 60% of the country’s exports in football gear and protective equipment come from Jalandhar alone making it a backbone of the global safety market and at the centre of this ecosystem is Shrey Sports which is a Jalandhar-based brand whose helmets are used by some of the biggest names in international cricket.
A standard professional-grade helmet like the one used by Shubman Gill is priced around Rs 17,000 to Rs 18,000 in the retail market however Virat Kohli’s helmet is more advanced and costs around Rs 24,000 to Rs 25,000.
The price difference comes from a special safety technology called Koroyd a patented material imported from Germany and this technology makes Kohli’s helmet lighter, more breathable and offers higher impact protection which is something crucial at the international level.
Shrey Sports led by founder and CEO Raghav Kohli supplies helmets to almost all Indian cricketers and around 90% of players across men’s, women’s and Under-19 teams use their helmets including names like KL Rahul, Hardik Pandya and Smriti Mandhana. The company has been supplying helmets to all IPL teams since the beginning of the league, with each team ordering around 35 to 40 helmets per season.
The demand for helmets has increased after new safety rules by the ICC and BCCI as now as per the rule if a ball hits a helmet it must be replaced immediately and earlier teams used around 20–22 helmets per season but now the number has almost doubled increasing both production and demand.
Shrey Sports currently manufactures around 600 helmets daily and exports to 16 countries while only 15-20% of its sales come from online platforms the global demand for high-quality protective gear continues to grow despite challenges like expensive testing and certification which costs up to $100,000 annually the company continues to invest heavily in research and safety.