Why India Still Doesn’t Have Its LVMH
Reliance has Shein. Birla has Sabyasachi. Tata has CLiQ. But who, really, has a vision?
When Reliance Retail announced it would bring Shein back to India; five years after the Chinese fast-fashion giant was banned, most headlines called it a comeback.
In truth, it was something bigger. A signal that India’s fashion economy is entering its conglomerate age: Reliance, Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail, and Tata Group are all building fashion portfolios that look a lot like France’s luxury giants, LVMH and Kering.
They’re buying into designers, launching digital luxury platforms, and forging global partnerships.On paper, it looks like the dawn of an Indian luxury empire. But under the surface, something’s missing: vision.
The Missing Middle: From Craft to Brand
India doesn’t lack creativity. It lacks consolidation.
Names like Sabyasachi, Rahul Mishra, and Manish Malhotra are globally admired, but these are designer-led houses, not business-led empires.
LVMH wasn’t built on creative genius alone; it institutionalized it. It took legacy brands, professionalized them, and turned them into a coherent system of storytelling, capital, and cultural control.
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India hasn’t done that yet. Instead, it’s turned its immense craft legacy into a supply chain, not a story. We make for the world. We just don’t always own what we make.
The Builders
Reliance: Scale Without Soul
Reliance Brands now owns or partners with over 60 global labels, from Balenciaga to Tiffany & Co. Its 2025 licensing deal with Shein marks a major shift; from import and retail to local manufacturing for global export.
It’s a logistical and geopolitical coup, positioning India as a post-China hub. But it’s also telling: Reliance is proving India’s industrial capability, not its identity. It’s scaling production, not prestige.
Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail: Building From Within
ABFRL is betting on Indian luxury itself, buying 51% of Sabyasachi, stakes in Shantanu & Nikhil, and Jaypore. For designers long limited by scale, that capital means power. But Birla is still in the incubation stage, not yet a full-blown house of brands.
Tata: The Curator
Tata CLiQ Luxury is India’s first e-luxury platform, merging editorial storytelling with shopping. It’s elegant, thoughtful, and consumer-facing.
But Tata, too, is a curator, not yet a creator.
What’s Missing
1. Capital Without Patience
Luxury is slow money. It takes decades to build legacy and loyalty.
European luxury groups think in generations; Indian investors still think in quarters.
2. Brand Without Belief
Our designers sell “heritage” and “handcrafted,” but luxury isn’t nostalgia, it’s timelessness. We haven’t yet learned to sell desire.
3. Craft Without Control
From Banarasi weavers to Kanchipuram silk makers, Agra’s leather workers to Kutch embroiderers; India’s craft economy is vast but fragmented.
Thousands of artisans create for global houses, but few own their output or their IP. The world wears India. But India doesn’t wear its name.
4. Consumption Without Identity
India’s new wealthy buy Gucci, Dior, Louis Vuitton because luxury still feels foreign. “Imported” equals aspirational. Until we take pride in our own craftsmanship, we’ll remain customers, not creators.
Towards an Indian LVMH
An Indian LVMH won’t emerge by copying Paris.
It will come from redefining luxury in our own image.
Here’s what it will take:
1. Professionalising Craft: Our artisans must move from informal labour to modern creative enterprise; with fair pay, traceability, and equity in the value they create. When a sari or bag can tell you who made it, handwork stops being quaint, it becomes elite.
2. Institutional Capital & Patience: Luxury requires investors who think in decades, not fiscal years. Reliance and Birla have the money. Now they need conviction.
3. Cultural Confidence: “Made in India” must evolve from artisanal to aspirational. We don’t need to imitate Western luxury, we need to interpret it through our own lens.
4. Cross-Category Vision: LVMH didn’t stop at fashion, it built an ecosystem: beauty, jewelry, wine, hospitality. India’s version must connect craft, beauty, wellness, and lifestyle into a full sensory universe of luxury.
The Real Opportunity
India has the materials. The skill. The labour. The design sensibility.What it lacks is belief; the courage to brand itself, not just build for others.
Because the truth is:
We don’t need to “make in India for the world.”
We need to make in India, for us, and let the world come looking.
