Why Galeries Lafayette’s India debut marks a luxury turning point

Spread over two buildings and five floors in south Mumbai’s Fort area, the high street shopping store brand will offer more than 250 international luxury brands, two-thirds of which are coming to India for the first time. The store is expected to open its doors for shoppers in November.

Apart from top brands from Europe such as Dior and Chanel, Galeries Lafayette will retail well-known luxury brands from Japan and Korea including Commes des Garçons (Tokyo) and Joseon Beauty (Seoul). Parisian brand Hermès, which also has a standalone store in Fort, Mumbai, will sell its beauty products at Galeries Lafayette as well.

Galeries Lafayette and Aditya Birla Fashion are betting on the soaring demand for personal luxury goods in India, as the country mints more dollar millionaires. India added 39,000 dollar millionaires in 2024 taking the total to 917,000, according to the Swiss bank UBS's Global Wealth Report, 2025.

Internationally, Galeries Lafayette's competition includes Harrods of London, Bergdorf Goodman in the US, and Printemps, France, none of which have a presence in India.

India a key market

Galeries Lafayette gets 37 million visitors a year in our Paris store, and half of whom are international, CEO Arthur Lemoine told Mint in an interview. “Clearly, we see many Indians there already. We know India is a key and strategic market. Indian customers can shop abroad in Dubai, Singapore, and Paris. But they are also asking for and expect to consume locally."

Brokerage firm Kotak Securities this May said India's luxury market grew to $17.67 billion in 2024 and will hit $85 billion by 2030. Much of this growth, to be sure, comes from spending on jewellery, especially during wedding season, while the sale of luxury cars is also a fast-growing segment.

Galeries Lafayette will also open a store in Delhi, although the timeline is unclear.

As global luxury brands spread their retail footprint, Indians initially had access only to them, said Ashish Dikshit, managing director of Aditya Birla Fashion. “But in the last 5-7 years in particular, Indians have more confidence and have started to do more discovery, exploring more brands and looking for upcoming labels and designers."

To capture demand from upwardly mobile Indian consumers, Mumbai’s Galeries Lafayette is designed to offer a “ladder to luxury," noted R Sathyajit, CEO of International Brands for Aditya Birla Fashion. For instance, one floor of the Mumbai store is dedicated to bags and the basement to cosmetics and beauty products — categories that most Indians make their first luxury purchase in.

The “sweet spot" for these entry-level luxury purchases can include a ₹3,000 Chanel lipstick or a small luxury brand bag worth ₹20-30,000, going up to ₹80,000 to ₹1.5 lakh, Sathyajit added. Other offerings for those flirting with luxury shopping include a floor dedicated to unisex casual and streetwear fashion with brands such as Commes des Garçons and Les Yeux, where shoppers can pick up a T-shirt for ₹5-6,000 apiece and a pair of jeans starting ₹10,000 a pair.

Global luxe slows

While Reliance Industries Ltd’s Reliance Brands has dominated the business of franchising foreign luxury brands in India, Aditya Birla Fashion has been making inroads into the business. In fiscal 2025, the Reliance company reported revenue from operations of ₹2,337 crore, up 3.3% year on year.

Aditya Birla Fashion’s luxury division crossed ₹500 crore in revenue in FY25, per its annual report. This division includes the multi-brand store chain The Collective, along with franchises for westernwear luxury brands Ralph Lauren, Fred Perry, and Ted Baker among others.

In 2021, the company acquired a controlling stake in luxury label Sabyasachi for nearly ₹400 crore, following up with another deal for a controlling stake in rival luxury label Tarun Tahiliani in 2024. A year later, the company also acquired a controlling stake in designer label Masaba for ₹90 crore.

The global market for luxury has slowed down drastically since 2023 after years of growth more from increased prices rather than sales volumes, consulting firm McKinsey said in a report this January. Economic slowdown in Europe and China has hit sales for luxury biggies such as LVMH and Kering. (This week, LVMH reported a 1% jump in sales for the September quarter, though.)

In this scenario, India has emerged as a bright spot for luxury brands and retailers companies searching for a new, eager customer base to sell to.

“The real challenge in India is luxury supply, not demand," Anand Ramanathan, partner for the consumer industry practice at consulting firm Deloitte, told Mint. “Indians are already going abroad to buy. But luxury brands coming to India need an ecosystem – the right location, parking, mall space. There isn’t enough of that ecosystem just yet in India."

He pointed out that while DLF Emporio in Delhi and Phoenix Palladium and Jio World Plaza in Mumbai have become luxury shopping destinations, there is much more demand for luxury shopping in the top five to seven cities in India. For now, customers in these places have to make do with smaller outlets in five star hotels or shop abroad.

Besides, Ramanathan added, some malls such as the Phoenix Mall of Asia in Bengaluru that were initially positioned as a luxury destination changed over time opening up to non-luxury brands due to slow business.