Every serious running crew in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi has had this argument at least once this year: On or Hoka. Not Nike, not Adidas — the two brands nobody's dad wore five years ago have somehow become the ones every marathon-adjacent techie and every physiotherapist's Instagram story keeps pushing.
Here's the uncomfortable truth for anyone hoping for a tidy answer: one brand is winning the growth race globally and quietly winning search interest in India too, while the other is stalling in its home market even as its cult following here stays loyal. Neither story matches the version running-shoe ads are selling you. Both brands arrived in India within the last few years on the back of the same pitch — cushioning as a lifestyle statement, not just a running spec — and both found an audience faster than most legacy sportswear brands ever managed here. Numbers first, verdict later.
The Case for On
Start with the scoreboard. On posted a reported 43% year-on-year sales jump in a recent quarter, a number that made Hoka's own parent company look sluggish by comparison, per Business of Fashion's breakdown of the two brands' diverging trajectories. That gap isn't a fluke quarter. On has spent three years pushing sideways into tennis, hiking, training and apparel, so it isn't riding a single running-shoe trend toward a wall the way its rival appears to be.
India has noticed. On sits at No. 3 in Hustle Culture's ranking of sneaker brands by Indian search volume, ahead of Hoka at No. 6, with 42% search growth logged for 2026. Cloud 5, Cloud 6 and the Cloudmonster line drive that interest, and on a separate list of trending running shoes in India, On practically owns the top nine spots — Cloud 5 at No. 1, Cloud 6 at No. 2, Cloudsurfer at No. 3, and so on down the line. Bangalore's tech crowd and Mumbai's gym-to-office set have adopted CloudTec cushioning the way an earlier generation adopted Vans. All-black colorways dominate the searches, which tells you something: this isn't just runners buying these. It's people who never plan to run a 10K, wearing them to the office. Call it the gym-to-street crossover: a shoe bought for a treadmill session that ends up doing double duty at a café table three hours later.
The Case for Hoka
Hoka's argument is simpler and, frankly, more honest. It still makes some of the best-cushioned everyday shoes anyone can put a foot in, and the data backs that up even as growth cools elsewhere. YouGov's brand tracking shows Hoka's US awareness climbing from roughly 42% to 52.5% within a year, with the brand beating category averages by wide margins on quality, reputation and — most tellingly — customer satisfaction. People who buy Hoka rarely regret it.
The slowdown, though, is real and worth naming plainly. Deckers now guides Hoka toward low-teens growth for fiscal 2026, down from 24% the year before, with one recent quarter landing at just 11.1%. Google Trends interest in the brand appears to have peaked back in summer 2024. Nike, New Balance, Brooks and Adidas have all built their own thick-soled competitors since, so the maximalist look Hoka basically popularized no longer belongs to Hoka alone. Its Indian fanbase skews toward doctors, nurses and Delhi's fitness circuit — people who stand or run for a living and couldn't care less what the shoe looks like at brunch. That's a real, sticky customer. It's just a smaller one than On's.
The India Math: Pricing and Who's Actually Buying
Neither brand sells through a mainstream Indian retail chain, and that matters more than any growth chart. On runs its own dedicated India storefront at on.com, pricing the Cloud 5 from around ₹14,500 and the Cloudmonster anywhere from ₹16,000 into the mid-₹20,000s depending on colorway, with limited drops like its Loewe collaboration pushing past ₹28,000. Multi-brand retailers — Sneakwear, CrepDog Crew, Hype Fly — fill in whatever the D2C site doesn't carry.
Hoka's India footprint is patchier. There's no equivalent official India storefront; buyers lean on multi-brand sellers like Hustle Culture and Kicks Machine, where the Clifton typically runs ₹14,000–16,000 and the Bondi sits around ₹15,500, though newer Bondi 9 and Clifton 10 generations have crept past ₹20,000 at some retailers. Neither shoe is an impulse buy at a mall kiosk. This is considered purchasing, made by people who've already decided they want maximalist cushioning — not shoppers stumbling onto it between a coffee run and a movie. The buyer profile on both sides is strikingly similar too: urban professionals with disposable income, already fluent in sneaker culture, treating a running shoe purchase the way they'd treat a watch or a pair of headphones.
The Verdict — And Why We're Pointing You at New Balance Instead
If forced to bet on which brand owns the next three years of India's comfort-running conversation, we'd take On, and it isn't close. The diversification, the search numbers, the fact that its India storefront actually exists — that's a brand building infrastructure, not just riding a moment. Hoka's slowdown isn't bad luck; a trend that peaked in 2024 and a cushioning style every competitor now copies is a structural problem, not a rough quarter.
Here's the honest part, though: SNKRS CART doesn't stock either of them. We carry Nike, Jordan, Adidas, New Balance and Crocs, and if what's actually pulling you toward On or Hoka is the promise of comfort over hype, New Balance is the closest thing on our shelves to that same itch. It won't hand you CloudTec or a Bondi's marshmallow stack height. But the dad-shoe-to-daily-wear crossover that made the 990 and the 2002R a thing runs on the exact same instinct — comfort first, silhouette second, no apology required.
We've written before about why New Balance is the fastest growing sneaker brand in India right now, and the short version holds up here too: the same crowd chasing On and Hoka overseas is discovering New Balance at home, for less money and zero import-duty guesswork.
So if this whole On-versus-Hoka debate has convinced you that you need a comfort-first shoe in your rotation, skip the international shipping headache and browse New Balance at SNKRS CART instead. Same comfort obsession. None of the customs paperwork.
