Charting a new course

There are moments when a journey is less about reaching a destination than about finding the wind that will carry you there. For luxury retail enhancement firm Litmus7, that journey has begun on the water with the formation of Litmus7 Racing Team India, the company’s first competitive sailing team, which will represent India at the BRICS Sailing Championship 2026 in Minsk, Belarus, from September 3 to 6 this year.

But this is not simply a voyage to another international sporting arena. It is the first leg of a much larger ambition: to help bring sailing in India back into the mainstream by widening its horizons of awareness, access and opportunity, while reconnecting the country with a maritime heritage that runs deep through its history.

Litmus7 has committed to taking the helm of the team’s entire campaign, covering the costs of training, travel, accommodation, equipment and competition fees as it builds a competitive Indian racing sailing team. The objective is clear -- to give Indian sailing the resources and momentum required to navigate onto a larger global stage.

The waters ahead will be challenging. Organised by Tenzor Sailing Group in partnership with the Belarus Sailing Federation, the BRICS Sailing Championship is an invitation-only event and forms part of Leg 3 of the prestigious Tenzor Elite Cup. Only 15-20 international teams are expected to compete, including the Top 10 teams from the Elite Cup, making this a particularly high-calibre fleet within the BRICS sailing circuit.

With TV BRICS as its international media partner, the championship will carry the race far beyond the shoreline, reaching audiences across 80 countries through multilingual television and digital platforms, with a combined audience of more than 1.5 billion users.

Flying the Indian flag will be a five-member crew whose collective experience brings together World and Asian Championships, national titles, international podium finishes and more than two decades of competitive sailing. The team has already demonstrated its mettle, securing third place at the Fareast Offshore Regatta after navigating nearly 3,000 nautical miles across the waters of China, Russia and South Korea -- an endurance test through some of Asia’s most demanding offshore waters.

The next passage is already being charted. Preparations for the BRICS Sailing Championship include intensive training aboard the J/80 sports keelboat at the Royal Madras Yacht Club in Chennai, before the crew moves to Belarus for a practice camp on the MX700 one-design keelboat, the official racing yacht of the championship.

Yet for Litmus7, the real voyage extends well beyond Minsk. The company sees India not as a newcomer to sailing, but as a nation reconnecting with a maritime legacy it helped shape. Long before modern sailing yachts crossed international waters, the kattumaram, developed by fishing communities along India’s southern coast, pioneered the twin-hull concept that would eventually evolve into the modern catamaran -- one of sailing’s most influential designs. “India gave the world the word catamaran. Reviving that yesteryear’s glory of Indian sailing as a sport, and as a thriving ecosystem is my dream and I can’t think of a better place to than Kochi,” says Litmus7 Founder & CEO Venu Gopalakrishnan.

It is a remarkable piece of maritime history, and one that Litmus7 believes deserves to be brought back into the national conversation. Despite its long relationship with the sea, sailing in India has remained a relatively niche pursuit, held back by limited infrastructure, specialised equipment and visibility. Litmus7 now sees an opportunity to change course, with Kochi emerging as the natural harbour from which to build a stronger and more accessible sailing ecosystem.

The story becomes particularly compelling through Amrutha Jayachandran, a Kochi native whose own life has taken an unconventional tack -- from architecture to sailing, adventure travel and entrepreneurship. As co-founder of Mountain Meets Sea, India’s first sailing-led adventure travel company, and one of the few women from Kerala actively working towards racing at this level, Amrutha represents the very qualities that underpin Litmus7’s vision: courage to explore, willingness to venture beyond familiar waters and the belief that new horizons are there to be claimed.

She sails alongside Abhimanyu Panwar, an internationally acclaimed sailor, J/80 Offshore National Champion and Founder of Sportifying India; Dheer Singhi, a multiple-time national and international medallist and sailing coach; Ragav Krishnan, one of India’s promising young sailors with national and international racing experience; and Arun Paruthiparambil Mani, a technology innovator and offshore sailor whose work in sustainable maritime technologies points towards the future of the sport.

Together, they form more than a racing crew. They represent the possibility of a new Indian sailing narrative -- one that draws strength from the country's maritime past while setting its compass firmly towards the future.

As the team prepares to compete against some of the world’s strongest sailing nations in Minsk this September, Litmus7 sees the championship not as the culmination of its voyage, but as its opening chapter. The larger mission is to champion Indian talent, celebrate the country’s maritime heritage and help shape a future in which sailing once again becomes an integral part of India’s global identity.

The course has been set. The sails are rising. And for Litmus7 Racing Team India, this is only the beginning of the voyage.