India, July 7 : For three days in late June, a giant human foot sat locked inside a steel cage on Carter Road, Bandra. No signage. No explanation. Just a handle scrawled on the side: @built. Joggers stopped mid-run to photograph it. City pages speculated. Nobody outside a small circle knew it was the opening move of a footwear brand’s launch – and a literal illustration of its founding argument.
Built is a natural movement-focused performance footwear brand, aiming to take the niche of natural movement/barefoot shoes and drive mainstream consumption by making it a desirable product.
Built to exacting global standards and assembled in India, BUILT enters the market with a simple conviction: the human foot doesn’t need more interference; it needs to be enabled. Performance footwear has been built for decades to control movement. BUILT was created to show the human foot what it’s really capable of.
Co-founder Vedant Lamba runs all things brand, while Vijayant Dhaka makes it happen with the supply chain.
They share one ambition: to build the world’s most respected performance footwear brand from India.
“Performance footwear isn’t just about cushioning or grip, it’s biomechanics, material science, durability, weight distribution, surface interaction, and manufacturing precision working together. India deserves products built for performance first, not adapted versions of something built for someone else.”says Vijayant Dhaka, Co-founder, BUILT
“Performance footwear has, for far too long, been interfering with nature. We’re building products that allow strength to develop in its most natural state, creating a generational shift in how people think about performance footwear. Our conviction is that the feet are far more capable than modern products allow. People have, for far too long, had to choose between sexy and healthy for their feet. We think we can change this,” says Vedant Lamba, Co-founder, BUILT
The Product
BUILT’s debut natural movement shoe comes in 4 colors. It is a sexy, riveting development in this world of traditionally ‘almost always ugly’ shoes.
The product thesis is specific, almost clinical. Traditional performance footwear, BUILT argues, is a direct contributor to common issues like bunions and plantar fasciitis. Narrow toe boxes and overengineered support structures have left most people unable to move their toes individually, despite the toes’ natural role in balance, strength and posture. BUILT’s debut range is designed to reverse that: to restore the range of motion the industry spent decades designing out. Your feet don’t need to pick between sexy and free anymore. They can be both.
The Natural Movement Shoe: is zero-drop, eliminating the artificial elevation that has quietly shifted posture across generations. Heat mapped traction on the outsole returns stability to the foot rather than engineering it into the structure. It is pressure-mapped, placing rubber where load actually falls – the same logic that makes a motorcycle tyre work. The construction is bonded rather than stitched: fewer failure points, less weight, less material between the foot and the ground.
The Court Shoe: carries the same intelligence into a different problem. The court demands rapid lateral movement, sudden stops, and the specific violence of a hard cut. A 7mm drop provides a platform to land on and push from. Lateral crash pads and balanced EVA cushioning sit exactly where a hard cut loads the shoe. An external TPU cage wraps the heel and midfoot where the court pulls hardest.
Both are built from the same engineered mesh, tighter where strength is needed and open where breath is. The design question behind both shoes was identical: what does this foot actually need, and what can we leave alone?
Why Now
India is in the middle of its fitness moment. The relationship with sport and wellness has crossed a line: from discipline to identity.
As fitness moves from habit to status, BUILT believes there has never been a better moment to build a brand with real emotional equity: not a commodity play, but a category-defining one built on the conviction that Indian feet have been underserved long enough.
“The industry-wide challenge will soon shift to making covetable, aspirational bare-foot products. It will be the norm, not the exception – wider toe boxes will be standard in anything with functional appeal,”add Vijayant Dhaka & Vedant Lamba, Co-founders, BUILT
The Market Opportunity
BUILT is candid about how it sizes up its competition: on day one, the brand says, it’s competing with Nike, and it’s roughly $50 billion in annual sales as the long-term benchmark, not a comparison to other Indian D2C players. Natural movement footwear already exists as an established niche internationally; BUILT’s bet is on moving it from niche to mainstream, from India first. The tailwind is real: India’s athletic footwear market was valued at roughly $6.2 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow steadily as fitness and wellness deepen from aspiration into identity.
Backed By
BUILT is incubated by Bharat Kalia, founder of Lifelong. The company’s pre-seed round is led by Tanglin Venture Partners, with participation from Bharat Kalia.
What’s Next
The team has an elaborate and ambitious road map laid out for the coming year with expansive SKUs – aiming to take this to the world within 18 months.