Virat Kohli

Timeline

1. 1988Born on 5 November in Delhi to Saroj Kohli, a homemaker, and Prem Nath Kohli, a criminal lawyer. Grew up in Uttam Nagar and studied at Vishal Bharti Public School.^[2]
2. 2008Captains India to the Under 19 World Cup title, the first clear signal that he would be a senior international.^[2]
3. 2011Part of the Indian team that wins the Cricket World Cup at home.^[2]
4. 2013Named captain of Royal Challengers Bengaluru and receives the Arjuna Award. India wins the Champions Trophy in England.^[2]
5. 2014Takes over as India's Test captain, beginning the most successful Test reign the country has had.^[2]
6. 2017Launches the sportswear label one8 and receives the Padma Shri.^[2]^[1]
7. 2018Becomes the first player to win all three major ICC awards in the same year, and the only Indian to be ranked number one in all three formats. Receives the Khel Ratna.^[2]
8. 2024Player of the match in the T20 World Cup final as India wins the title, then retires from T20 internationals.^[2]
9. 2025Retires from Test cricket on 12 May. In December he sells one8 to Agilitas Sports and invests 40 crore rupees in the company.^[2]^[1]
10. 2026Continues as a Royal Challengers Bengaluru player and as an investor, with one8 now run by Agilitas.^[1]

Who Virat Kohli is

Virat Kohli is an Indian cricketer who turned a teenage talent into the most closely followed career in the sport after Sachin Tendulkar's. He was born in Delhi in 1988, grew up in Uttam Nagar in the west of the city, and came through the Delhi age group system before captaining India to the Under 19 World Cup in 2008. That tournament is usually treated as the moment the senior selectors decided he was ready, and he was in the one day side within months.^[2]

His early international career was uneven. He had the shots and the temperament but not the consistency, and the 2011 World Cup, which India won at home, came when he was still establishing himself in the middle order. The transformation came afterwards. Between 2012 and 2019 he scored runs at a rate that had no contemporary equal, and by the end of that period he had the most centuries in one day internationals and the second most in international cricket overall.^[2]

He is also the most scrutinised Indian athlete of the social media era. His fitness, his diet, his celebration and his marriage to the actor Anushka Sharma have all been treated as news, and the coverage has followed him into phases of his career when the runs stopped. That intensity is part of the record: no Indian cricketer has been discussed in as much detail for as long, and few have carried a team's expectations so openly.^[2]

The captaincy years

Kohli became India's Test captain in 2014 and held the job until 2022. In that period India became the top ranked Test side in the world, won a series in Australia for the first time, and built a fast bowling attack that could take wickets outside the subcontinent. The record is not perfect, because India did not win an ICC trophy in the format, but the team's away results changed the way visiting sides were expected to play.^[2]

He captained the one day and Twenty20 sides as well, which made him the all format captain for most of that period. The workload was enormous, and the decision to give up the limited overs captaincy in 2021 and the Test captaincy in 2022 was presented as a way to manage it. He continued as a player in all three formats, and the team's results did not collapse when the captaincy changed, which is a measure of how much of the side he had helped build.^[2]

His leadership style was confrontational in a way that Indian captains had not been. He picked fights with opposition players, defended his own aggressively, and made the team's fast bowlers the centre of the plan rather than an afterthought. It produced the best away record India has had and a share of criticism that he has said he used as motivation.^[2]

The batting record

Kohli has 86 international centuries, the most in one day cricket and the second most across all formats, behind Sachin Tendulkar's 100. He is the leading run scorer in the Indian Premier League, where he has played his entire career for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and the first player to score 20,000 international runs in a decade. He was named the Cricketer of the Decade for 2011 to 2020 by the ICC.^[2]

The one day record is the one that will be hardest to break. He has more centuries in the format than any player, at an average above 55, and he did it while batting at number three in an era when scoring rates rose sharply. The 2023 World Cup, where he broke Tendulkar's record for the most runs in a single World Cup, was the clearest demonstration that his game had adapted to the higher tempo rather than resisted it.^[2]

His Test record is more complicated. He scored more than 9,000 runs and 30 centuries in the format, including centuries in Australia, England and South Africa, but his average fell in the last four years of his career. He retired from Tests in May 2025, and the final phase of his career has been played almost entirely in one day and Twenty20 cricket.^[2]

The awards followed. He has won ten ICC awards, more than any other player, including the ODI Player of the Year four times and the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy twice. He received the Arjuna Award in 2013, the Padma Shri in 2017 and the Khel Ratna in 2018, and Time included him in its list of the 100 most influential people in 2018.^[2]

Business and one8

Kohli's commercial career began with endorsements and became a portfolio. At his peak he was estimated to earn 634 crore rupees in a year, according to the figures cited on his Wikipedia page, which placed him among the highest paid athletes in the world. The money came from cricket contracts and from a long list of brand deals that made him the face of everything from sportswear to banking.^[2]

The one8 label, launched in 2017, was the attempt to own a brand rather than rent his face to one. It began as a partnership with Puma and grew into an athleisure and footwear business aimed at young Indian consumers. In December 2025 he sold the brand to Agilitas Sports, a company founded by Abhishek Ganguly, the former head of Puma India, and invested 40 crore rupees in Agilitas to become a minority shareholder.^[1]

The structure of that deal is worth noting. Kohli sold the brand entirely, then took a stake in the buyer, which means he is no longer the owner of one8 but has exposure to a larger sports merchandise company that owns it. Agilitas also owns Mochiko Shoes, one of India's largest footwear manufacturers, and the plan is to expand one8 into the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.^[1]

His other business interests include a stake in the Indian Super League football club FC Goa, a chain of restaurants, and investments in consumer brands. The common thread is that they are all tied to sport, fitness or the aspirational Indian consumer, which is the same audience that watches him play. It is a narrower portfolio than a generalist celebrity investor would hold, and it has been more durable than most athlete owned brands.^[2][1]

What has not been confirmed

The financial terms of the one8 sale have not been disclosed. Bharat Fast reports that Kohli sold the brand and invested 40 crore rupees in Agilitas as a minority shareholder, but neither side has published the sale price, the size of the stake or the revenue of the label, so the value of the transaction cannot be independently checked.^[1]

His current net worth is not published in any audited form. The earnings figures that circulate come from endorsement reports and Forbes style estimates, and they vary widely between sources, so this record does not repeat a single number.^[2]

The full ownership structure of his business interests is not public. Stakes in FC Goa, the restaurant business and various consumer brands are reported at the time of investment, but the holding companies behind them and the current valuations are not disclosed.^[2][1]

His plans after his playing career have not been set out. He has not announced a coaching, administrative or commentary role, and the only post retirement commitment on the record is his continued association with Royal Challengers Bengaluru and with Agilitas.^[1][2]