Not too long ago, Mumbai’s Horniman Circle was an address headlined by two iconic luxury brands. On the northern edge of the crescent that is lined with a row of neo-classical, colonial-era buildings stood the showrooms of French high fashion duo Christian Louboutin, known for its glossy red-soled shoes, and Hermes, for exquisite leather craftsmanship. They afforded passersby a fleeting peek into the rarefied world of global luxury.
Cut to 2025, and the spotlight has shifted. The curious glances that were once reserved for international brands are now drawn to two homegrown names that have come up in the vicinity. The first among them is an opulent three-storeyed “fashion museum” tucked behind an unassuming facade; it was set up in 2023 by Sabyasachi Mukherjee, founder of the eponymous label who is renowned for dressing Bollywood glitterati in bridal couture. More recently, in August, Rahul Mishra, designer to celebrities like Cardi B and Zendaya, unveiled his 7,500 sq ft atelier, a space that celebrates not just his collection of apparel and accessories, but also the avian, botanical and entomological motifs that serve as his muse.
The changing dynamics at Horniman Circle are not just redefining a neighbourhood—they stand as a metaphor for the evolution of Indian luxury, which is no longer playing catch-up with its global counterparts but is stepping forward to set the tone. In February, Jennifer Lopez dazzled at her Abu Dhabi concert in an Anamika Khanna ensemble; Mishra’s AFEW collection shares space with the likes of Gucci at Saks Fifth Avenue, the iconic American luxury department store; Mumbai’s Misho Designs counts Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner among fans of its jewellery; members of a Middle Eastern royal family shop at the Jaipur-based Trunks Company; while Brad Pitt, in his recent film F1, sports an indigo-dyed shirt from 11.11, a sustainable luxury label with a boutique in Delhi and a showroom in New York. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
But building a luxury brand in India doesn’t come easy, especially when, for decades, the country has been the sweatshop of global luxury brands. It requires patience and “countless sleepless nights”, as Gautam Sinha, the founder and creative director of Nappa Dori, an artisanal leather accessories brand, puts it. 11.11, for instance, was founded in 2009, but has found global recognition only now. “At the Paris Haute Couture Week, I think every second garment is made in India because of the craftsmanship, but India has never been credited for it,” says Mishra, who has been a fixture at the high-profile fashion show for over a decade. “Now that is changing.” Those driving the movement are not just incumbents like Titan—which started as a mass brand but went on to add the premium Tanishq and super luxury Zoya brands to its portfolio—but also insurgents like Nappa Dori.
This quiet shift of India transitioning from being the workshop to the brand is reflected in its booming luxury goods market. While there isn’t enough data to quantify the size of the homegrown brands—estimates suggest it is less than half of the overall luxury market—its upward trajectory can be gauged from the 12 to 15 percent CAGR growth Bain & Co has projected for personal luxury spend (excluding real estate) in the country: Currently pegged at $25-30 billion, it is expected to reach $40-45 billion by 2027. Perhaps no surprises that a hundred orders poured in for Mishra’s custom-made, hand-embroidered sari gown, priced at ₹7 lakh apiece, that American actress and singer Zendaya was seen wearing at the NMACC opening gala in Mumbai in 2023.
In contrast, the personal luxury goods market in Europe, the home of global behemoths, shrunk 2 percent in 2024, the first such decline recorded in 15 years (barring the Covid-19 years). Gucci’s sales dropped 25 percent, while profits for its parent Kering, which also houses brands like Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga among others, halved in the year. Alongside, luxury spending in China, once a key driver, fell 20 percent. “The opportunities for Indian luxury brands are tremendous. These factors will help them set the context and introduce a luxury product, because the tailwinds are in place,” says Chirag Shah, principal, Avendus Future Leaders Fund.
“My biggest surprise is Indian luxury didn’t go global earlier, given our history of the range of design. This was highly overdue. Now it’s happening because of two reasons. One, digital has made the world a smaller place,” says Nonita Kalra, the editor-in-chief of Tata Cliq Luxury. “Second, India has become a really important market. And when that happens, you have to focus on all things Indian and not just look at its celebrities in a vacuum.”
But, for designers, luxury resides at the intersection of time and craftsmanship, in the anti-thesis of fast fashion, a market that a Redseer report valued approximately at $10 billion in 2024. Over 4,000 hours go into putting together a Games Island Trunk at the Trunks Company; it takes six to eight months for a typical handwoven silk sari replete with intricate motifs to make it from the loom to the shelves of Ekaya Banaras; and 5,000 to 7,000 hours of sampling culminates into a bespoke 24-kali lehenga at Rahul Mishra’s that eventually sells for ₹45 lakh.
“For me, it’s not the price tag that makes the product luxurious,” says Mishra. “The wages paid for Zendaya’s sari amounted to nearly 30 percent of its price. Add to it the margin for retailers, and that one product creates a human resource value of ₹3 lakh, nearly 50 percent of the price, just because the sari has been crafted slower. If I would have digitally printed it, this value would have been less than 15 percent. Real luxury lies in how you make things.”
But convincing consumers about the primacy of craftsmanship over cost has been a tough journey for brands, especially in their fledgling years. “Customers used to come to Nappa Dori and say this is a canvas and leather bag that should not cost more than ₹5,000. Whereas we sell them at 2 times that price,” says Sinha, founder and creative director of the company that started from a Scooty garage in Delhi’s Hauz Khas to scale up to 17 stores globally. “But the justification was they were paying for the value of the design. That journey has taken a long time.”
At 11.11, co-founders Shani Himanshu and Mia Morikawa have revived indigo dyeing methods that are nearly 5,000 years old, weaving traditions that date back almost 500 years, and re-engineered bandhani (tie-and-dye) techniques, adapting them to everyday wear silhouettes rather than limiting them to traditional saris and scarves. “But, in India, the understanding of craft-led design for everyday wear is very different from abroad. For us, scaling outside was a little easier and faster than within India,” says Himanshu. “Here, we still struggle to assign greater value to crafted products. Everyday-wear brands with a craft focus have low visibility due to the unorganised retail sector.”
Add to that the exponential growth of the counterfeit market. Media reports say that, globally, luxury companies lose about $30 billion annually due to the rise of fakes. The counterfeit shoe market alone has risen 1,200 percent in 10 years, from $46.1 billion in 2013 to nearly $600 billion in 2023, while, according to Statista, the fake luxury watch market is expected to reach $9.3 billion in 2025. Computer-generated embroidery can now create 18 colourways in apparels, something unimaginable even five years ago. “Authenticity is one of the biggest problems in the luxury market now. I have trained my staff and taken upon myself to educate customers and make them understand the feel of handwork,” says Mishra.
The lack of a community to foster luxury enterprises has been highlighted by Paritosh Mehta too, who set up the Trunks Company with the support of his brother Priyank to handcraft artisanal trunks that range from trunks for bars, watches and games to even a former Indian cricket team captain’s bespoke kitbag. “If you go back in time, a ‘Made in India’ label was preferred over ‘Made in Britain’. We had all the pedigree, but no one valued it—we didn’t contribute to it,” says Mehta, founder and artistic director, who made one of his first products for a former minister—a customised trunk for tea and coffee. “But that is changing. Today, it’s globally visible that luxury brands are using Indian aesthetics, materials, and crafts.”
In a handwritten note of appreciation, a member of a Middle Eastern royal family, who had commissioned a bespoke set of travel trunks for his private jet, mentioned that both he and his father (to whom he had gifted one) had replaced their legacy-brand trunks with those from Trunks Company. One of Mehta’s trunks was recently auctioned by Sotheby’s for $40,000, vindicating his conviction in a venture that was started in a vacuum—at a time when leather accents were unheard of—with only “the desire to showcase the best of India to the world”.
Agrees Vikram Goyal, founder of Vikram Goyal Studio and lifestyle brand Viya: “Customers are now becoming more design-conscious, focussed on process and quality, what the design inspiration is, what the narrative is, and what all goes into the making. That interest wasn’t there a couple of years ago. It’s recent.”
Also read: Lessons from luxury on creating more with less
Meanwhile, India’s HNWIs—those with assets exceeding $10 million—are projected to rise 9.4 percent, from 85,698 in 2024 to 93,753 in 2028.
That apart, the growing awareness about luxury has helped the industry move from what once seemed like niche experiments to a fast-maturing sector buoyed by rising consumption. A PwC report titled How India Spends projects that, by 2031, India is expected to have a consumption economy of ₹426.4 lakh crore, growing at a CAGR of 13.4 percent between 2023 and 2031. This will be powered by surging per capita disposable income, which stood at ₹2.14 lakh for FY24, while gross savings for the period declined by 30 percent. “This decline in savings indicates a shifting trend in consumer spending patterns in terms of increased expenditure,” says the report.
“Consumers are being more discerning about their purchases. They are increasingly well travelled and exposed. We are seeing a lot of young people moving into nuclear homes, where they want to bring in their own personalities. And this is just going to get better and better,” says Goyal, the New Delhi-based designer, celebrated for his work with metal and for being the first Indian brand to showcase at some of the best galleries in the world, such as Nilufar in Milan. He is now set to make his debut showcase at the prestigious Design Miami.Paris fair.
Alongside, consumer preferences are moving towards experiences. Over 70 percent of Indians now prioritise creating lasting memories over accumulating possessions, says Anurag Mathur, partner and leader of Bain & Company’s retail practice. Brands like Jaipur Rugs, which manufacture hand-knotted carpets that cost ₹5-10 lakh in the high-end range, and can go upwards of a crore, have tapped into this mindset, transforming their products from mere commodities into experiences. The company, with a group turnover of ₹1,170 crore and presence in six countries, including Italy, Dubai and Singapore, now has a customer base that considers carpets as heirloom items meant to last generations.
“Luxury is a word used very lightly. It’s hard to say what is luxury and what isn’t. But interactions with customers have taught me that luxury is not just about quality, but also the experience,” says Yogesh Chaudhary, director, Jaipur Rugs, and the second-generation scion. “I remember a client once telling me that he bought a carpet from us because each time he put his feet on it, it reminded him that he’s arrived in life.”
Even as demand strengthens and consumers are willing to pay for experiences, scaling a luxury business in India requires more than just craftsmanship—it requires capital. “Homegrown brands, including larger ones like Sabyasachi, would need to continue investing in the product and brands to continue scaling,” says Mathur of Bain.
Yet, most brands dabble with the valuation versus value-creation riddle that comes with external capital. Jaipur Rugs, for instance, has chosen to stay bootstrapped because, as Chaudhary says, “the challenge with getting funds is that they will try to chase growth very fast. Sometimes, when you grow too fast and you’re not ready, there comes a point where you break down”.
Six months ago, Trunks Company raised money—it pooled ₹80 crore in private capital, combining personal and strategic investments —bringing the total investment to ₹120 crore to fuel international expansion. “Being bootstrapped has its advantages. A lot of investors are about valuation, thereby missing long-term value creation and brand building,” says Mehta of the company. “The painful side, on the other hand, is when you run out of money—like, during Covid, we hardly had the bandwidth to run for more than a month or two.”
A number of frontline luxury fashion ventures, too, have taken the plunge to seek investors and accelerate brand-building. Enterprises like Shantanu Nikhil, Tarun Tahiliani and House of Masaba are funded by Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd (ABFRL). In 2021, Sabyasachi sold 51 percent stake of his company to ABFRL for ₹398 crore, and, with its financial muscle, expanded in scale, clocking revenues of ₹487 crore in FY24. The designer from Kolkata is expected to breach the ₹500-crore mark in FY25, the year he completes his silver jubilee in the business.
The other large investor in homegrown luxury brands is Reliance Brands Ltd (RBL), which has, in its portfolio, companies like Manish Malhotra, Ritu Kumar, Satya Paul etc. RBL has also rolled out a joint venture with Rahul Mishra that, as the designer puts it, “takes care of the retail theatrics” while he looks after creative. “Retail is where the money comes from that takes care of business,” says Mishra. “Expansion of retail, be it within India or globally, usually takes some time. This partnership gives us a fair chance of becoming a global brand within a shorter time period.”
Because, Mishra says further, high-end luxury is an avenue that offers brands the opportunity to scale through retail footprint. “Otherwise a Hermes or a Louis Vuitton would not be this big.”
But entrepreneurs like Nappa Dori’s Sinha have adopted a different strategy, zooming in on only his core offerings and phasing out Dori Living, a homewares vertical he had launched during the pandemic when handbag sales had plummeted. “This is a strategic move as we can’t be everything to everyone. Selling a bag priced at ₹80,000 and an espresso cup for ₹500 are two different market segments altogether,” he says. “And now we are editing our line even tighter, focusing more on travel.”
While most ventures have an eye on global forays, luxury consumption is rising at a fast clip within India too, beyond the usual metro destinations. Palak Shah, CEO of Ekaya Banaras, recently made sales of ₹30 lakh in a single day from a pop-up in Kolhapur. “It was equal to what I managed to sell in Bengaluru over three days,” says Shah, who has contemporised a fourth-generation textile business into a high-end, handcrafted Banarasi sari venture. “I’ve always focussed on bigger cities because it feels nice to talk about it. But in smaller cities, customers are hungry for everything you offer.”
Over 50 percent of Tata Cliq Luxury’s sales in FY25 came from non-metro markets, say media reports. Says Kalra of Tata Cliq Luxury: “There’s been a democratisation of luxury in India. It’s no longer limited to Mumbai, Delhi or a similar city. It’s gone to smaller towns and satellite cities, and that’s the reason luxury is now so robust in India.”
Yet, despite picking up strong momentum, Indian luxury labels remain nascent in scale compared to global giants. “All the relatively large brands have less than 20 percent of business coming from global markets and are currently not listed among the top five or 10 brands in any luxury category,” says Mathur of Bain.
To mature in the luxury space, Indian brands should be looking at how others in the global space do it, says Lorenzo Vitturi, an Italian artist and photographer, who collaborated with Jaipur Rugs on three collections. He highlights the common thread seen among global players—building long-time relationships with leading international designers while staying loyal to their roots. This not only gives them identity, but also creates brand loyalty and increases visibility.
Indian brands, he says, “…start taking the first steps to mature, doing the right things, working with the right designers, but a successful brand in the luxury space needs a long-term vision, consistency in their collection, and a clear and honest story.”
Adding to that is the fact that, in India, premiumisation is often mistaken for luxury. ““By definition, luxury is a scarce product and is based on cultural capital, while premium is just better quality and aspirational. Your ₹40,000 phone is premium, and not luxury,” says Shah of Avendus. A number of brands have made a mark in the premium space, including the likes of Mokobara or Kama Ayurveda or Forest Essentials, but haven’t yet transitioned into luxury. While Titan has put the playbook in place now with its seamless journey from Tanishq to Zoya, “even for them those are just seeds that they expect to grow into trees in the next 5-10 years,” adds Shah.“There is a big shift happening right now in terms of consumer preferences. This is the time for premium brands to scale up into luxury, because the time to do it is now.”
Infographic research by Samreen Wani
First Published: Oct 01, 2025, 14:12
Subscribe Now