Indian luxury is multifaceted, and nowadays luxury has mainly become an emotionally driven business sector. Understanding how the different Indian customers engage with it is relevant not only for brands in the field but also for foreign and domestic higher education institutions to train the required talents in the expanding luxury-consuming market.
Luxury attractiveness is ultimately motivated by personal and cultural values, attitudes, and reasons. In this perspective, the Indian luxury market has the potential to hold a significant role in the global luxury business scenario. India’s economy has been steadily growing over the last few years, which has raised the nation’s disposable income with the middle class showing an increase in credit card expenditure as a result.
This increase in the number of wealthy people suggests that India’s luxury sector is seeing thriving demand. Rapid economic growth is expected to cause India’s luxury industry to rise to 3.5 times its current size, reaching the US $85–90 billion mark by 2030, according to a report by Bain & Company. According to these projections, the luxury market in India is expanding at the quickest rate in the world. And in this context, the new middle class and highly wealthy people are driving a significant increase in demand for high-end goods, which has led to a period of expansion in the luxury sector in India – similarly to the surge in demand that was noted in China in the early 1980s.
Yet, nowadays, luxury rhymes with experience and with a specific lifestyle including diverse luxury sectors contributing to the creation of the comprehensive experience positively impacting the luxury growth in India. However, a growth occurring in a market that despite its expansion cannot count on a pool of experienced experts with substantial experience contributing to the understanding and development of the business domestically as well as to the understanding of the specific in the Indian consuming market .For domestic luxury brands, talents acquisition with a specific expertise in the field, would mean a way to reimagine themselves and discover new effective creative business and managerial approaches to accomplishing their goals and in some cases be also recognised internationally as in the case of family-owned companies. At the same time, for Indian talents, the acquisition of a specific know-how in the luxury sector would mean career opportunities domestically and internationally through their specific know how of their acquired skills combined with their country of origin.
In the last years, a specific attention has been oriented towards managerial programs in luxury brand management to develop new talents, train in domain competence and make it easy to learn the skills required for success in the luxury business as well as in creating their own firm. However, at present, despite the increasing professional opportunities provided by the acquisition of a specific expertise in luxury business and management, and the increase demand of professional figures in the field, only a limited number of highly competent domestic institutions – and mostly in cooperation with foreign higher education partners – is providing a comprehensive managerial education in the domain.
The global higher education scenario shows Indian talents responding positively to academic programs in the fashion and luxury sector operated by foreign academic institutions abroad ensuring consolidated pedagogical paths not simply for technical and creative figures but in particular for managerial ones. However, the foreign-based pedagogical offers in the luxury and fashion management fields are not always providing a positive impact on the Indian higher education system in a long-term sustainable perspective and in supporting the innovativeness and development of the Indian luxury and fashion culturally specific market.
In such a complex and challenging context, the academic partnerships with foreign academic players in the field could not only propose innovative responses in luxury management programs – partially locally based and partially overseas – to ensure the training of talents with a “glocal” perspective in the domain. In supporting local academic institutions to maximise the academic scholars’ expertise in the domain in a “train the trainer”, foreign higher education institutions could also engage in a joint research perspective to contribute to build a self-sustainable country-based know-how in luxury and fashion brand management.
The author is Chair of the Luxury Brand Lab at Excelia Business School, France.
