Lifestyle Brands Walk The Premium Tightrope

Imagine a customer walking into a premium lifestyle store to buy a vase, but leaving with a dinner set, tableware, candles, and a few other pieces of décor for their living room. A few months later, the same customer is back, looking for a housewarming gift for family and friends.

This is the loyalty that brands yearn for. Give more reasons for the customers to return and get a larger share of their wallet as well as their mind space. It’s never about one vase. 

This is exactly where the next leg of growth lies for the premium and mass-premium lifestyle market – not by abandoning what they are known for, but by finding more ways to bring the same customer back into their world. While some are simply moving from kitchenware into décor and gifting or from clothing into home and occasionwear, others are seeing an opportunity in new channels to reach those customers.

The catch, however, is that every new avenue, be it physical retail, marketplaces, or quick commerce, comes with its own set of challenges. And there’s no channel that can be sacrificed. 

• More stores mean more fixed costs 
• More categories mean more inventory and operational complexity 
• Wider distribution can bring reach but reduce control over the brand experience 
• More discounting can move volume while making it harder to justify the premium tag

The question, then, is not whether these brands can find new avenues for growth, but which of them can deliver growth without stretching their economics or diluting the brand.

The Bar For Premium Is Rising

From mass-premium homeware to more design-led and aspirational propositions, brands are carving out different positions to woo a crowded market. But the underlying challenge is: how do you give customers more reasons to buy?

For Nestasia, the answer lies in making premium design accessible to a broader set of Indian consumers while expanding the occasions and categories around the brand. Cofounder Aditi Murarka Agrawal says the brand sees room to grow both its customer base and category presence.

The mass-premium opportunity is therefore less about making premium products cheaper and more about widening the addressable consumer base without stripping away the attributes that justify the premium. 

Nestasia’s positioning sits around this balance of design, quality and accessibility, particularly for middle- and upper-middle-income consumers who may be trading up selectively rather than buying luxury across the board.

“We see substantial room for deeper penetration. We already operate across D2C and marketplaces and have our exclusive brand outlets (EBOs). Meanwhile, trade and other offline channels remain relatively untapped opportunities that we are exploring to reach newer customer cohorts,” Agrawal said.

Then, the customer is also changing. Products that once were bought purely for utility are increasingly being evaluated for how they look and what they say about the home. Kitchen tools, cookware, storage and dining products are becoming part of a broader design vocabulary.

“The Indian consumer has become far more discerning. There is much greater exposure to international brands, and with that comes a sharper understanding of design, material and longevity. People are buying fewer things, but they want those things to mean something and to last,” said Rashi Sethia, the CEO of Nicobar, a modern Indian lifestyle and fashion brand.

This shift changes the growth equation for premium brands. If consumers are becoming more deliberate about individual purchases, brands cannot rely on simply increasing product launches or pushing volume. They need to create more occasions in which the same consumer sees the brand as relevant, while retaining the design, material and craftsmanship cues that support the original purchase.

While this creates an opportunity, it also raises the bar for many. Meanwhile, Kushal Bhagia, the founder and partner at All In Capital, sees repeat behaviour, full-price sell-through, contribution margins, customer acquisition costs and lifetime value as the more meaningful measures of demand. 

“For a premium consumer brand, I would want to see improving contribution margins, disciplined customer acquisition, healthy inventory turns and a credible path to EBITDA profitability. Growth can create value, but only if the economics improve as the business scales,” Bhagia added.

The Cost Of Staying Premium

Finding more customers is only one side of the equation, but serving them without diluting what made the brand attractive in the first place is another.

For ellementry, a premium handcrafted homeware brand, expansion has meant moving beyond kitchenware and tableware into décor, furniture, soft furnishings and gifting. But founder Ayush Baid sees a clear limit to category expansion. 

“Our filter is fairly simple: does the category let us use the same design philosophy and manufacturing strengths such as our artisans, our materials, our craftsmanship, or does it require us to build an entirely new competency from scratch?” he said.

This matters because premium positioning can make some conventional growth tactics counterproductive. A case in point is heavy discounting, which may accelerate sales but can also teach customers to wait for promotions. Similarly, wider distribution may create reach but can compress the experience through which a design-led brand communicates its value.

The same tension is emerging with quick commerce. For ellementry, platforms such as Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart have created new impulse and gifting-led buying occasions that were not meaningful to the brand a few years ago. But the channel also changes the nature of discovery: a premium product can suddenly compete alongside convenience-led purchases and price-led promotions.

Nicobar’s approach is similarly selective. Its expansion into gifting, eveningwear, menswear and home is being framed not as a way to increase the product count, but as an attempt to accompany the same customer across more occasions.

“So, as we look at new categories and new markets, the first question is never: ‘How big is this opportunity?’ but ‘Does this feel genuinely right for Nicobar?’” CEO Sethia said.

Physical retail creates another version of the same trade-off. A store can help a consumer experience materials, craftsmanship and the full product universe, but it also creates rent, staffing and inventory costs.

The Next Growth Engine

If premium brands cannot simply sell more of the same product to the same customer, the next phase of growth will depend on creating more reasons to buy.

That need for growth becomes clearer when the scale of some of these businesses is put into perspective. Nestasia reported ₹115 Cr in revenue in FY25 but posted a ₹7.7 Cr loss, while Nicobar reported ₹174.8 Cr in revenue in FY25 and a ₹13.6 Cr profit. Aditya Birla Group-acquired Jaypore reported ₹93.5 Cr revenue in FY25, with a loss of ₹55.9 Cr. 

These are meaningful businesses, but they are still some distance from the scale of India’s larger consumer franchises. Therefore, the next phase is less about proving demand for premium lifestyle products and more about finding the levers that can take a ₹100–200 Cr brand to its next stage of scale.

Nestasia is eyeing adjacent categories and new channels; the company sees an opportunity in moving towards more elevated homes, better dining experiences and design-led kitchen spaces.

For ellementry, the opportunity extends beyond India. According to cofounder Baid, the brand is seeing demand for Indian design and craftsmanship internationally, while digital channels are making premium products more accessible to consumers.

“The key to making these opportunities commercially viable will be balancing design and craftsmanship with operational efficiency, consistent quality, and the right distribution strategy,” he said.

Geography could become an equally important growth lever. The next affluent customer may not necessarily emerge from a traditional metro city. Consumers in smaller cities are increasingly exposed to global brands and design trends, while physical access to premium labels remains more limited.

Nicobar sees physical expansion outside the metros as an inevitable part of the growth strategy. But the economics have to catch up with the aspiration: sensible retail costs, adequate demand and supply chains capable of maintaining quality.

All in all, the broader opportunity for these brands lies not in India’s rising affluent population but in the premium that their customers can willfully cough up repeatedly. 

A larger category portfolio can increase wallet share, but only if the categories reinforce the brand. More stores can create discovery, but only if they eventually generate attractive returns. New channels can widen reach, but not if they train consumers to expect discounts. 

The brands that crack this equation well won’t just sell one vase but a reason to keep coming back.

SPOTLIGHT | The Indian Puja Box Wants To Modernise Everyday Rituals

• Founded in 2021 by Maithili and Giresh Vasudev Kulkarni, the D2C startup offers curated puja kits and devotional products aimed at making everyday Hindu rituals more convenient and organised, building around the idea of a ‘masala dibba’ for puja essentials.
• Its flagship Puja Boxes bring together essentials such as agarbatti, dhoop, Gangajal, kumkum, haldi, chandan and ghee/oil wicks, packaged in premium wooden boxes priced upwards of ₹2,000. The brand sells primarily through its D2C website and also caters to gifting and bulk orders.
• The brand is tapping the shift towards convenience-led religious consumption, packaging traditionally fragmented puja essentials into curated, ready-to-use kits. By 2024, the startup was profitable and clocking ₹5.5 Lakh in average monthly revenue. 

The Deep Dive

ECOMMERCE BUZZ 

• RentoMojo’s Bumper Market Debut: The furniture and appliance rental company closed its maiden trading session 32.24% above the IPO issue price at ₹534.25 on the NSE, giving the furniture and appliance rental startup a market capitalisation of ₹5,548.8 Cr.
• Practo’s Leadership Reset: The healthtech startup has appointed former COO Jagnoor Singh as CEO, while cofounder Shashank ND will become the managing director and executive chairman as Practo prepares for a proposed public listing and Shashank shifts focus to his new venture ‘Cent’.
• Rebel Foods Narrows Losses: The foodtech unicorn cut its FY26 net loss by 16.3% to ₹281.8 Cr, while its revenue jumped 20.7% to ₹1,951.6 Cr. Its international revenue jumped 38.8% YoY to ₹283.81 Cr, while revenue from India grew 18%.
• UPI Gets Its First MDR Framework: NPCI has introduced a 0.4% MDR on P2M UPI transactions above ₹2,000, capped at ₹300, which is set to take effect on October 15. P2P payments and small merchants receiving up to ₹1 Lakh a month will remain exempt.

The Operator Question

With online customer acquisition getting expensive, how can a premium lifestyle brand use physical stores to attract new buyers without overspending? Share a practical playbook for choosing the location, store size and budget.

We reached out to Rashi Sethia, the CEO of premium lifestyle brand Nicobar, to understand the playbook here. Here’s what she divulged:

Turn Stores Into Brand Experiences: Nicobar sees its stores as more than points of sale. They are spaces where customers can experience the brand, its design and products, making physical retail an important way to acquire new customers.

Let Digital Demand Guide Expansion: The brand uses online demand to identify cities and neighbourhoods where it already has customers but no physical presence. It also looks at locations where its target consumers already spend time, including areas around cafés, restaurants and other lifestyle spaces.

Test Before Going All In: Nicobar does not believe bigger stores are necessarily better. Right-sized stores, pop-ups, exhibitions and dedicated gifting spaces can help the brand tell its story while testing demand before committing to a larger physical footprint. The focus is on keeping fixed costs such as rentals disciplined while investing in store design, product selection and frontline staff.

[Edited by Shishir Parasher]

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