Meet Shrabani B, a lifestyle professional in Delhi who sources super-expensive indulgences for rich people. Rich people make difficult clients, always asking for the impossible because they can pay for it, like grilled tarantulas for dinner. Shrabani gets them bit roles in Bollywood films; a courier guy with a couple of lines or a cop who gets shot in the first half and keels over crying for help.
Some demand a dinner date with a chartbusting popstar. Shrabani’s most challenging request, however, came from a client in Surat who demanded a tanned leather vintage suitcase made in the late 1800s by Finnigan Ltd as a wedding present for his son.
The bride had one already, passed down by her grandfather who lived at a time when wealthy Indians travelled to England by boat and packed volumes of clothes and accoutrements for various social occasions. She found one at last, with a reputable London dealer in Picadilly who had the genuine article, complete with lock plate stamped with its name and Manchester, the city of its manufacture.
Or take Manas T, from Yamunanagar, a relatively small town in Haryana. He managed to get admission to a Delhi college and needed a new suitcase. The old metal trunks and suitcases, which his family used for travelling by train and bus, just wouldn’t do. Like many of his friends and classmates, Manas went online and bought a trendily designed white Mokobara strolley with tan wheels.
You can’t blame the new FOMO luggage lovers, because one has to ‘belong’ to be noticed. The portmanteau describes the luggage logic of 2024 with smart travel features and AI power. Who wouldn’t want a rideable suitcase scooter such as an Airwheel SE3S with cool tyre-style wheels and a built-in motor that turns the piece into an electric scooter with a maximum speed of 8 miles per hour; the owner can buzz about sitting or standing. Press a button and the telescoping handle slides up, making it a regular suitcase. A video of Shilpa Shetty zooming through Mumbai airport on her motorized suitcase with her daughter in her lap took the travel metaphor to its next level for bemused Net natives.
A smart suitcase with a built-in USB powerbank with a high-speed output for fast on-the-go charging with changeable colours of the LED-lit logo, all powered by a long-lasting rechargeable battery is outstanding travel porn.
How about an AI-powered smart suitcase that follows you? Here comes the ForwardX Ovis with AI-powered self-driving technology that will dog your steps at the airport and railway station. It has sensors to control its autonomous movements and adjusts to your walking speed without hitting obstacles. It boasts of two USB ports and a built-in power bank juiced up with a detachable lithium battery.
Once upon a time, luggage used to be stodgy, reliable and enduring. Except for the rich, who prized their large legacy Louis Vuitton Travel Trunks (some still do, but strictly for use on private jets and yachts), the middle class preferred the durability of impedimenta over style. Not anymore. Any show-offy product of the New Indian Luggage revolution has become a status symbol across classes. It is bold. Colourful. Stylish. Has innovative shapes and designs. In short, it is exciting.
Or at least that’s what Indian luggage makers are trying to convince themselves and their buyers. It seems to be working. “A vibrant transformation is underway, driven by a convergence of rising aspirations, tech-savvy consumers and expanding reach of e-commerce,” notes Saurabh Srivastava, Vice-President of Amazon Fashion India. “There is a shift from traditional, functional luggage to products which are as stylish as they are practical. This reflects the evolving needs of modern travellers,” Srivastava adds.
Indian luggage brands have transformed to stay in the game of making travel fashionable. An influx of newly designed, packaged travel luggage with novel designs, hues, technology and accoutrements is changing the way we travel. The Look is the ticket. “Innovations such as printed luggage for users seeking self-expression, ultra-lightweight bags for effortless mobility, and differentiated designs, shapes and materials help our consumers express their style while travelling comfortably,” says Neetu Kashiramka, Managing Director and CFO, VIP Industries Limited.
The luggage and bags market in the country is worth $15.04 billion in 2024, according to a report by Statista, a global data and business intelligence platform. The main takeaways from the report: 87 per cent of the luggage sold will be non-luxury in 2024; only a small percentage of Indians buys deluxe luggage; India’s growing middle-class and increasing travel aspirations are driving a surge in demand for premium luggage and totes.
Even if the share of luxury luggage buyers is low, the volume is high, considering the population—the Wealth Report 2023 predicts India’s HNIs with net worth over $30 million will rise by 58.4 per cent in the next five years. Indian tourists splurged $23 billion in 2018 to over $45 billion in 2022 abroad. Hence, a luxury luggage and suitcase brand like Rimowa, whose products go for lakhs of rupees, is doing brisk business after opening at the Ambani-owned Jio World Plaza; A piece of cabin luggage from the brand costs upwards of $1,500 while check-in suitcases cost $2,000 and upwards.
“This is a boon for people like me,” says Gauri Malhotra, a brand conscious marketing professional in Mumbai. “Until now, if a wheel came off my Rimowa, I would have to wait to go to Dubai to get it fixed.” She prefers expensive suitcases over cheaper options, more for practical purposes than snob value, since they last longer. She travels in India and overseas frequently; A McKinsey reports predicts Indians could become the fourth-largest global travel spenders by 2030. They will make five billion trips in 2030. They will spend about $410 billion on travel—a surge of over 170 per cent from $150 billion in 2019.
“My husband loves his Tumi, while nothing short of a nuclear holocaust can separate me from the Goyard Trolley Case he got me for my 30th birthday,” says Prerna K, an IT startup owner in Bengaluru; Tumi is the go-to luggage brand for male Indian and Asian businessmen and corporate travellers. While Goyard is the last word in quiet wealth luggage, only a few stores in Europe and the US sell its masterpieces.
Online luggage retail has made looking, choosing and clicking on that stunner of a suitcase as easy as buying a banana in the Bahamas. E-commerce companies are thumbing their nose at established luggage purveyors with a smorgasbord of selections in materials, design, colours and tech features. Smart luggage with GPS tracking and smartlocks is seeing an uptick in demand: “Consumers search for products with more features,” elaborates Sudhir Jatia, Managing Director at Safari Industries Ltd. Features like TSA locks, interior organisers for convenient packing and smoother wheels are things to look for while buying luggage. Luggage is shedding its baggage of conventional past. The VIP brand has been restyled and remarketed by founder Dilip Piramal and his 37-year-old daughter Radhika, who engineered the company’s transition from a luggage to a lifestyle brand, after sensing that travellers, especially Gen Z and Alpha, want to look and feel like a VIP.
Like Rajeshwari Datta, a 32-year-old Bengaluru-based game developer, who invested in a set of Mokobara trolleys, though not a VIP, for her recent Europe trip. “Looking for a new luggage brand,
I found one that perfectly matched both my budget and quality expectations. Its exciting range of colours and TSA locks proved invaluable during multiple transit check-ins, and gave me peace of mind that my belongings were secure. The best thing about the suitcases was the 360-degree Hinomoto wheels, which helped us smoothly and noiselessly lug them along the cobbled streets in Italian towns,” Datta recollects. Wheels get protection too now; Amazon sells shock-absorbing silicon wheel covers that safeguard suitcase wheels and makes pulling bags on uneven surfaces effortless.
Fashion designer Maya Pillai bought a set of American Touristers in pastel recently. “Planning an international travel, we looked for a durable, lightweight bag in vibrant but pastel colours for easy identification on the airport carousels. We went for anti-theft and anti-breakage features, a level of protection often unavailable in cheaper options,” she says.
Who, what and why is driving the change? The Indian luggage turbocharge is being fuelled largely by buyers from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cites, which saw an average salary jump of 22 per cent last year. Wealth is pouring into the economy from the Indian urban hinterland; for example Tier 2 cities such as Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Indore have a recorded economic growth rate of over 40 per cent. A BCG report noted that 50 per cent of online shoppers live in these cities, a proportion that could touch 60 per cent by 2030. Ergo, there is more money to spend on ticking off bucket-list items.
According to travel agents, nearly half of the business, offline and online, for Thomas Cook, SOTC and MakeMyTrip comes from Tier 2 and 3 places. More tickets sold means more suitcases bought. Premium is the climber on the price ladder, with consumers upgrading from value to mass premium and even premium. “This trend is not limited to luggage alone but is visible across lifestyle categories, and is fed by the growing need to indulge and aspire for a better lifestyle with an increase in discretionary spending,” explains Managing Director and CFO, VIP Industries Limited Neetu Kashiramka.
The great luggage race now is between hard and soft luggage, with the first segment way ahead. People want sturdy packing since their trips have gone up in numbers, either for work or pleasure. Bengaluru girl Vidya Shree, the 38-year-old co-founder of SocialTravelPass—an experiential travel company— prefers hard luggage, explains “Polycarbonate luggage offers impact resistance, durability, scratch and water resistance, and it’s lightweight. These factors matter, to keep the unique handmade and fragile souvenirs I carry from around the world, safe,” says the avid traveller and art collector.
No wonder, with examples like hers, the share of the hard stuff luggage in the luggage market has climbed steadily to 55 per cent from just a third over the past five years. Hard luggage weighs lighter and has more design and colour options. Smart features with anti-theft designs and charging ports are finding favour with new or newly converted buyers who go for trolleys as top favourites. Sachin Takkar, Vice-President of Category Management, Myntra reveals: “We offer over 2,000 new and trendy collections from renowned international, homegrown, and direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands.”
India’s Big Fat Wedding is bagging it big. Cool luggage is as important in a trousseau as a priest is in a mandap: anything from three to nine pieces are reportedly de rigueur for wedding travel. Wedding suitcases are a thing in Instaland: a ‘Shaadi Series’ has a suitcase trousseau packing video with clear instructions. Industry estimates peg the domestic branded luggage market growing at an annual rate of 9 to 12 per cent, of which the market for domestic brands like Kamilant from American or Tourister Safari Thorium Neo is worth Rs 6,000 crore and the non-branded segment Rs 15,000 crore. Samsonite’s American Tourister is the true Samson of the luggage market, accounting for 70 per cent of the market, according to industry data.
The unorganised sector mainly imports soft luggage from China to sell at cheap outlets, weekly bazars and low-level supermarkets, catering to mass consumers. In the Rs 5,300-odd crore Indian luggage market, unbranded luggage still constitutes a mammoth 75 per cent. Many are knockoffs with misspelt logos, or bought from cheap malls in Asia. ‘The Look’ is what counts, whether it is a counterfeit pair of Armani jeans or a Fendi tote bought from a Bangkok mall as Indians across age groups and incomes fall in label love.
And how do the new luggage labels give their goods cachet? Variety, of course. Assembly Travel, a fairly new company from Delhi, is working towards premium-ising the owning of luggage. “Our products incorporate essential features such as a built-in shoe bag, trolley kit, and packing cubes. We address common traveller concerns to improve the overall travel experience at every stage, from security checks to packing and unpacking,” elaborates Mohit Garg, its co-founder. Of course, with all such features, the fashion of the day—sustainability—impacts luggage as well.
Where cricket is religion, luggage is god. Abhishek Daga, co-founder of Nasher Miles, which got a valuation of `200 crore on Shark Tank India-3, decided early in the game to ride the cricket wave by joining hands with Chennai Super Kings in IPL. Daga shares his reasoning behind onboarding brand ambassador, cricketer Rishabh Pant, saying, “He has a youthful energy and quirky dress sense that sets him apart from the ordinary.
Coming from a Tier 2 town, he embodies the spirit of a challenger, much like us, making him the perfect ambassador for Nasher Miles.” Fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah endorses the Uppercase brand made by the Acefour Accessories, started in 2021 by industry pioneer Sudip Ghose, (former managing director, VIP). Choosing the entry point was the success of Daga’s strategy.
“Until 2017 or so, the branded market comprised largely three major players, leaving almost 65 per cent of the market unbranded. We saw this gap, and identified a lucrative niche within the unbranded segment to tap into without the risk of getting cannibalised,” says Daga. His family’s bread and butter is in outsourcing; manufacturing poly-trolleys for other brands. Daga felt it was time to go the extra mile. His main Shark Tank competitor is Assembly, another luggage startup.
Meanwhile, Mokobara took a new approach to capture market attention. “We sent out samples of our luggage to influencers to create excitement around the launch and were pleasantly surprised to see it spread across India. The influencers fell in love with our brand and products, and the rest of India followed suit,” says Rumman Rizvi, founding member. The national excitement is an exaggeration of course, but the purpose was achieved. The company inked a new kind of collaboration with IndiGo Airlines, creating a signature, limited edition product which allows the user to carry two extra kg when flying with the airline with the said luggage.
Collaborations are another new flavour of the times. Assembly Luggage has joined hands with Chumbak to create a collection of trolleys, complete with organisers and backed by a five-year warranty. True to Chumbak’s signature style, it showcases whimsical paisleys, playful tuskers and vibrant tropical motifs. “As Indian consumers evolved, the contours of style have evolved too, ranging from bold, expressive and colourful at one end to more minimalistic style at the other end of the spectrum,” says Kashiramka.
What is in vogue is what makes money; luggage companies have bought tickets on the environmental bandwagon with sustainable production and eco-friendly products made with recycled materials. Acefour Accessories focuses on recycled materials to make its trolley bags. “Using premium quality yarn produced from recycled plastic bottles or our environmentally-sensitive packaging material conforms to our ‘designed for good’ philosophy,” Ghose says. Samsonite is in on this game too; it recently launched the Magnum Eco range of spinners, made from yoghurt cups for the shells, and PET bottles for the interior lining.
“In homes, luggage has always been recycled. If parts broke, the bags were used for storage. Today, brands must provide a medium for plastic-moulded luggage to be returned or recycled properly,” notes Lokesh Daga, co-founder and brother of Abhishek; Nasher Miles ran a ‘Bring Your Old Luggage For A Discount’ campaign. Vidya Shree has
a wish: “Companies should have at least one range of suitcases only made of recycled materials.” She believes that brands must endorse hard luggage since it lasts longer and reduces the need to buy another piece. Safari’s plants create zero plastic waste, ensuring every bit is recycled, and VIP is soon bringing sustainable luggage made with recycled PET in their premium brand Carlton.
Youthful ideas are driving market share for Direct to Customer (D2C) players like Mokobara. Post the pandemic, it strategised on new forms of travel such as family road trips; it designed and marketed products specifically sized for the car boot. a shift towards “gender-inclusive styles, minimalist designs, and the integration of smart travel technology, all underpinned by vibrant colour palettes and utilitarian functionality”, as Srivastava puts it.
The competition is over who has the most unique print, limited editions and brand ambassador-led campaigns. Safari Bags, born in 1974, has been quick to catch on to market shifts and trends, and respond fast with a social media splurge. In Jatia’s words, “We grew 20x in the last decade. As Indian consumers became increasingly aspirational, Safari brought international level features, revolutionising a once slow category.” The brand spends tons more on digital advertising today as compared to its traditional marketing budget five years ago. The right deal in the luggage industry gets the hashtag; Nappa Dori worked with BRICS Summit and, more recently, with Air India for a curated leather accessories kit for Wings India 2024.
In the great luggage market teeming with new materials and designs, leather still flies first class. Leather suitcases will suffer on commercial travel, hence, they have to be handled carefully; not every millionaire has a Bombardier of his own. This, however, hasn’t stopped some bag-makers from turning out luxurious classics with metal bases and rivets, wooden panels and leather interiors and covers embossed with logos. Leather has signified affluence and class for centuries and, even today, the sense of luxury goes with the material. “Leather luggage to me is a timeless elegance that only deepens with every journey, narrating tales of adventure and embodying a character that no other material quite captures,” shares Gautam Sinha, founder of Nappa Dori. The company makes vintage-style, leather suitcases called Steamer and Trucker. “The inspiration behind these trunks lies in the nostalgia of my childhood. Our family moved houses quite often and a large part of that involved packing our belongings in huge metal trunks—the beginning of my fascination for these items,” shares Sinha.
In the realm of malletiers (trunk-maker in French), the allure of leather has been reinvented by the Jaipur-based Trunks Company. With a meticulous approach to their craft, brothers Priyank and Paritosh Mehta curate just 100 exclusive leather trunks annually, each meticulously tailored to order. Drawing upon premium materials sourced from across the globe—Italian leather, supple lambskin from Chennai, and rivets from France—their customised creations are for the discerning traveller.
From housing precious perfumes and exquisite spirits to safeguarding priceless heirlooms and regal armaments, these bespoke trunks have found a devoted following among the world’s elite, including erstwhile royal families attracted to their craftsmanship and timeless feel. “Whether it’s our travel equipment or our other products across categories, we cater to a niche urban audience that's well-travelled, nostalgic, appreciates individuality and also reflects a shared passion for art, design, craftsmanship and a life well-lived,” Sinha explains.
The humble suitcase and old family iron trunk now belong to the sepia age of old India. Today, Indian luggage is a portmanteau of choices. Just like travel and other good things of life.