Luxury has a long and storied lineage in India. It was in 1903 that Jamsetji Tata built India’s first luxury hotel, the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai—a property that, even at the time, offered electricity, air-conditioning, elevators, and telephones in every room. While palaces and residences of the Indian royalty that were later converted into luxury hotels dominate today’s rankings (Rajasthan is India’s luxury hotel capital), the Taj set the tone for what luxury would come to mean in modern India.
India’s market for luxury goods and services has expanded on the back of rising wealth. In 2014, the country had just over 192,000 individuals with a taxable income of over Rs 50 lakh a year. By 2024, this number had risen nearly five-fold. The number of taxpayers with incomes between Rs 1 crore and Rs 10 crore a year has risen 320% in the past decade, as Prince Tyagi captures in the data spread of this special edition on the luxury boom in India. Various research estimates suggest that the luxury market in India is around $30 billion today and expected to triple by 2030.
“Luxury starts where necessity ends.” This time-worn cliché, quoted by Mercedes-Benz India CEO Santosh Iyer in his interview with Chetan Bhutani, still captures the essence of the sector. And today, a key trend stands out: demand for top-end items is strong in cities outside the big metro centres.
Nowhere is this more visible than in hospitality, where luxury hotels are expanding rapidly into India’s emerging cities. This is the subject of our cover story in this issue. As Smita Tripathi reports, the number of luxury hotel rooms across India will rise over 57% by 2030 to nearly 55,000. Anecdotal evidence suggests that during the busy season, many of these pricey rooms are sold out. The new luxury hotel boom, however, is not confined to big metropolitan centres—it is also spreading to Siliguri, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam, and Ayodhya, among others.
Both Indian and foreign hospitality chains are doubling down on the opportunity, investing nearly $1 billion. The Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL), East India Hotels, ITC Hotels, Hilton Hotels, and Marriott International are leading the charge with aggressive pipelines that include brands like The Ritz-Carlton, Waldorf Astoria and Conrad. Alongside, these groups have moved to capitalise on the branded-residence opportunity. As Puneet Chhatwal, MD & CEO, IHCL, says, the moment the gap between per capita income and the size of the economy narrows, the growth in India’s luxury market will be very sharp.
Homes, too, are being redefined by the same luxury lens. As E. Jayashree Kurup writes, the rise of bespoke properties has created a market where the wealthy expect hotel-level service at home.
As luxury comes of age in the country, Indian conglomerates are also ramping up their investments in this space. As Krishna Gopalan writes, be it Reliance Industries, Tata Sons, or the Aditya Birla Group, the aggression is clear, though the strategies are different. For global and Indian brands alike, this is less a boom and more a structural shift, one that would redefine how the world views India as a luxury market.
