Aditya Birla Fashion brings Paris’s Galeries Lafayette to Mumbai

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

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

Galeries Lafayette and Aditya Birla Fashion believe the demand for personal luxury items is growing as India churns out more dollar millionaires. India will add 39,000 dollar millionaires in 2024, bringing the total to 917,000. Global Wealth Report of Swiss bank UBS, 2025.

Internationally, Galeries Lafayette’s competition includes Harrods in London, Bergdorf Goodman in the US and Printemps in France, none of which are available in India.

India is an important market

Galeries Lafayette’s Paris store receives 37 million visitors a year, half of whom are international, CEO Arthur Lemoine said. Mint in an interview. “Frankly, we already see a lot of Indians there. We know that India is an important and strategic market. Indian customers can shop abroad in Dubai, Singapore and Paris. But they also want and expect local consumption.”

India’s luxury market will grow to $17.67 billion by 2024 and will reach $85 billion by 2030, brokerage firm Kotak Securities said in May. Of course, much of this growth comes from jewelry spending, especially during the wedding season; Luxury car sales are also a rapidly growing segment.

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

Ashish Dikshit, managing director of Aditya Birla Fashion, said that as global luxury brands expanded their retail footprint, Indians initially only had access to them. “But especially in the last 5-7 years, Indians have become more confident and have started exploring more, discovering more brands and looking for upcoming brands and designers.”

Galeries Lafayette in Mumbai has been designed to offer a “staircase to luxury” to capture the demand of emerging mobile Indian consumers, said R Sathyajit, CEO, International Brands, Aditya Birla Fashion. For example, one floor of the Mumbai store is dedicated to bags, while the basement is dedicated to cosmetics and beauty products, categories where most Indians make their first luxury purchases.

The “sweet spot” for these entry-level luxury purchases may include: ₹3,000 Chanel lipsticks or a small luxury brand purse worth ₹It goes up to 20-30,000 ₹80,000 to ₹Sathyajit added 1.5 lakhs. Other offerings for those flirting with luxury shopping include a floor devoted to unisex casual and streetwear from brands like Commes des Garçons and Les Yeux, where shoppers can pick up a T-shirt. ₹5-6,000 each and one pair of jeans starts ₹10,000 per pair.

Global luxury is slowing down

While Reliance Industries Ltd’s Reliance Brands dominates the franchising business of foreign luxury brands in India, Aditya Birla Fashion is moving towards this business. Reliance company reported revenue from the following operations in fiscal 2025: ₹2,337 crore, up 3.3% year-on-year.

Aditya Birla Fashion’s luxury division has passed ₹500 crore revenue in FY25 as per its annual report. This division includes multi-brand store chain The Collective, as well as franchises of luxury western wear brands Ralph Lauren, Fred Perry and Ted Baker.

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

The global luxury market has slowed significantly since 2023 after years of growth driven by rising prices rather than sales volumes, consulting firm McKinsey said in a report this January. The economic slowdown in Europe and China has hit sales at luxury giants such as LVMH and Kering. (This week LVMH reported a 1% increase in sales for the September quarter.)

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

“The real challenge in India is not demand but luxury supply,” said Anand Ramanathan, partner in the consumer sector practice at consultancy Deloitte. Mint. “Indians are already going abroad to buy. But luxury brands coming to India need an ecosystem – the right location, parking, mall space. India doesn’t have enough of that ecosystem yet.”

He pointed out that while DLF Emporio in Delhi and Phoenix Palladium and Jio World Plaza in Mumbai have emerged as luxury shopping destinations, there is much more demand for luxury shopping in India’s top five to seven cities. For now, customers here have to settle for smaller stores in five-star hotels or shop abroad.

Moreover, some malls that were initially positioned as a luxury destination, such as Phoenix Mall of Asia in Bengaluru, have expanded to non-luxury brands over time due to slow business, Ramanathan added.