Fifteen brands would enter India tomorrow. There is nowhere to put them

In India’s fast-growing economy, millions of newly affluent shoppers are creating demand for Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Dior bags and accessories. The problem lies elsewhere: getting to a store is not easy — there are too few of them.

With a population of almost 1.5 billion and economic growth of more than 6%, India is expanding faster than China, which for more than a decade was the engine of the luxury industry’s growth. But leading brands are struggling to expand because of an acute shortage of quality retail space.

The country has only three genuine luxury malls: two in New Delhi — Emporio and Chanakya, owned by the developer DLF — and Jio World Plaza in Mumbai, owned by the Reliance conglomerate.

“We regularly get requests from parent companies — from LVMH Group, from Kering, from Richemont — to give them more space for the brands they want to bring into India,” says Saurabh Bharara, head of luxury malls at DLF. “We have a top 15 brands ready to come into India if we gave them space tomorrow.” But, he adds, available space right now is “zero”.

DLF is planning an extension to Emporio that would double its 160,000 square feet of leasable space — but the site is unlikely to open before the end of 2028. LVMH, Kering and Richemont declined to comment.

The scale of the demand, meanwhile, is plain: according to the Knight Frank Wealth Report 2025, India ranks fourth in the world for the number of people worth more than $100 million, after the US, China and Japan.