Esquire India’s Five Cover Stars Are the New Regals of Today

What is in the name?

Everything – when you’ve earned it.

For generations, regality has been perceived as inherited. Passed down like heirlooms, sealed by surnames and protected by lineage. But someone once said “Change how people think and you would change the world." And the world has changed. Through insistence, through the quiet, relentless will to become.

Esquire India in partnership with Chivas Luxe Collective Perfumes has identified the new changing order of achievers who through their sheer efforts and individuality have become names we’ll long remember as the new regals who forged a breakthrough path for themselves.  The vision of the New Regals is a portrait of five individuals who didn’t inherit influence, but constructed it through force of will.

Jonita. Neeraj Ghaywan. Vir Das. Shreyas Iyer. Anchit Kapil.

Across music, cinema, comedy, sport, and entrepreneurship, they have built worlds that extend beyond themselves. And then learned how to stand at the centre of them with intent, integrity, resilience and poise despite being under pressure, under praise, even under scrutiny.

What unites these five regals is not only visibility but their command over their craft. Each of them has built something that didn’t exist before they insisted on it: a voice that crosses borders without dilution, a cinematic language that expands empathy, a form of comedy that refuses neutrality, leadership that alters the temperature of a team, a culture that reorganises how desire moves.

Each has claimed space in systems not designed to center them—Jonita, with a voice that crosses borders without losing definition; Neeraj, as a cinematic storyteller who expands empathy; Vir, through comedy that refuses neutrality; Shreyas, with leadership that shifts the energy of a team; Anchit, by creating a culture that reshapes how desire moves. And all have, despite the odds, expanded those systems by refusing to leave with an apology.

As Esquire’s legacy of style, substance, and storytelling continues to take root in India, it feels fitting that these five individuals, each shaping the present while defining what comes next, front our latest covers. They represent a new kind of regality: earned, considered, and unmistakably current.

The cover shoots and images will be revealed shortly. Stay on a lookout for it!

Credits

Photographer: Prasad Naik

Director: Tejal Patni

Compiled By: Nitin Sreedhar, Prannay Pathak, Rudra Mulmule, and Saurav Bhanot

Agency: Dentsu India

Production House: Fusion Films