Red Chief Brand Guidelines: Kanpur Leather Shoes From Leayan Global and the RSPL Group

An export business, a family group and a leather city.

Red Chief is a men’s footwear brand from Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh. Its owner is Leayan Global Pvt Ltd, a company in the Kanpur-based RSPL Group, the family business behind Ghadi detergent. Entrepreneur India reported in July 2023 that Leayan Global was incorporated in 1995 to export leather footwear and allied products, and that it launched Red Chief as its flagship brand in 1997. Open magazine, writing in April 2026, also dates the launch to 1997 and names Manoj Gyanchandani as the founder who launched it under Leayan Global, with the backing of the RSPL Group.

Gyanchandani told Entrepreneur India that he had wanted to do something different from the family’s existing business, and that the rise of Kanpur’s leather trade in the mid-1990s turned him towards a leather-shoe venture; he wrote a business plan, and his father backed it. Kanpur is known above all for leather and leather goods, he said in the same interview, and both articles tie the brand closely to that setting. Open describes the original idea as genuine leather footwear for a growing but cautious middle class, at a time when Indian shoppers bought fewer pairs and took longer to decide.

The business is vertically integrated. According to Entrepreneur India, Leayan Global runs its own tannery in Kanpur and makes shoes at units in Kanpur and Unnao, with a daily capacity of more than 6,000 pairs. Open gives the same figure in 2026, says the company invested early in an in-house tannery and factories, and reports that most of its output is made internally. Gyanchandani is the managing director of Leayan Global, which had about 700 employees, according to the 2023 article.

Multi-brand counters first, then stores of its own.

Red Chief was built through other retailers’ shops before it opened its own. Open reported that the brand grew first through multi-brand outlets and only later added exclusive stores, and described its growth as incremental: no early outside capital, no aggressive push for scale and no early stretch beyond its core product. Entrepreneur India dates that step to 2011, when Red Chief added clothing to its range and set up a retail division to sell footwear and apparel together; its own stores began in Kanpur. In July 2023 the company said it had more than 200 exclusive stores in more than 16 states, and that the brand reached more than 24 states through some 5,000 multi-brand outlets. In April 2026 Open counted more than 200 exclusive stores and a presence in more than 5,000 outlets, with the strongest footprint in North and West India and in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. As of November 2026, the brand’s own website says it has more than 230 stores across India.

Online selling followed in 2012, when Leayan Global began offering its footwear and apparel through e-commerce platforms, Entrepreneur India reported. Physical shops still dominate: Open wrote in 2026 that offline channels account for roughly two-thirds of sales, and that the brand’s strength in smaller cities rests on them.

The range has widened around the leather core. Red Chief’s website groups its shoes as formal, sports, sneakers, boots, sandals and slippers, and also sells T-shirts, leather belts and socks; the company describes its footwear as made in India from genuine leather. Open reported that formal leather shoes still make up a substantial share of the business, and that sports shoes and sneakers, added in response to demand from trade partners and shoppers, contributed a single-digit share in 2026. Leayan Global has also started separate labels, according to Entrepreneur India: the sports brand Furo Sports in 2016, and in 2021 both Comfort Walk, for lower-priced everyday footwear, and Top Brass, a formal label with three stores in Lucknow and Prayagraj.

Design and documentation.

Indian footwear, bag and accessory brands tend to present themselves through names more than through pictures. A single company often runs several labels at once, each with its own logo, catalogue and shop page, so that a rubber slipper, a sports shoe and a formal shoe can reach different buyers while sharing factories and distributors. On company websites the parent name usually sits in the footer and the investor pages, while the sub-brand names lead on the shelf.

Shopfronts carry much of that identity. Many of these companies sell through a mix of exclusive showrooms, franchised stores, multi-brand dealers and online marketplaces, and their own pages count those outlets and list the cities and states they reach. Some names are above all store names: Metro Brands runs Metro Shoes and Mochi as separate store banners.

Group ownership is part of the picture. Fastrack belongs to Titan Company, the watch and accessories business, and Woodland is the outdoor brand of the Delhi company Aero Club. Others, such as Relaxo, Liberty, Campus and Khadim’s, are listed companies whose corporate pages describe their founders, their factories and their share listings on the National Stock Exchange of India and BSE.

Advertising often leans on film actors, named in dated campaigns reported by the trade press, and on dated catalogues for each range. For a designer, the useful material is the documented part: the names, the store formats, the founding dates and the factories. The palettes and type in these guides are unofficial interpretations, and no logo or product is reproduced.

A film-star face for a leather brand.

Red Chief’s public face changed in January 2026, when the actor Ayushmann Khurrana was named its brand ambassador, afaqs! and Social Samosa reported on 23 January. Both reports said the appointment was part of marketing aimed at metro cities as well as tier 1, 2 and 3 cities, and at a wider range that takes in formal leather shoes, casual footwear, sports shoes and sneakers. The company said the partnership would run across digital, television, print and outdoor media. Open described the choice in April 2026 as broad-based and relatable rather than sharply aimed at the young, and reported that the brand’s communication still targets people aged 25 to 45.

The company’s own words carry the rest of the identity. Its website leads with shoe categories, formal, sports, casual and leisure, and with the lines “Made in India” and “100% Genuine Leather,” which the company uses to describe its own product. The brand name stays the same across shoes, clothing and accessories, while Leayan Global keeps its other labels under separate names.

For a design guide, Red Chief shows how a maker rooted in one material and one city can carry a single brand name from wholesale counters into its own stores. Compare Hush Puppies, another shoe brand with a strong leather and suede story, and Woodland, another Indian footwear brand in this series. For this guide we use oxblood, tan and parchment with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Red Chief’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.