Underdoggs

Underdoggs opened in 2011 around a gap in the market: Delhi’s sports bars were built almost entirely around cricket. It became a bar for many sports at once, with food, games and, later, its own beer. Today it has ten locations across India, with six more under fit-out.

I founded the brand and direct it. Between 2017 and 2019 I also designed five of its venues myself: Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar in 2017, then Aerocity in New Delhi and Cyber Hub in Gurugram. Ludhiana and Jalandhar opened as Underdoggs Brewery & Kitchen brewpubs, at a time when good craft beer was hard to find in Punjab.

A sports bar trades on its peaks: the first half of a big match, a full weekend night. The same room has to feel right on a quiet afternoon, when a handful of tables are taken and the screens are background.

That makes sightlines to the screens, the length and position of the bar, the route from order to glass and the mix of seating operating decisions as much as design ones. Each venue was judged on how it traded, not only on how it looked.

Because I direct the brand, I see how those decisions play out years after opening: what slows the bar, which tables stay empty, what the team works around. In 2024 Underdoggs at Worldmark 2, Aerocity, won Best Live Screening Bars at the EazyDiner Foodie Awards Delhi NCR, an award to the venue and its team.