What Is Keeping India From Being A Global Fragrance Powerhouse?

FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, INDIA HAS BEEN ONE OF PERFUMERY’S greatest muses. It is said that the love story behind the Taj Mahal inspired the creation of one of history’s most enduring perfumes—Guerlain’s Shalimar. Nearly a century later, Byredo founder Ben Gorham released Mumbai Noise, an ode to his childhood in Chembur. More recently, Prada’s Infusion de Santal Chai raised a few eyebrows in a country where chai borders on the sacred. The ancient texts, too, reveal India’s fragrance heritage. The Gandhasara treated perfumery as both science and art. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata mention aromatic oils and sandalwood water, while Vatsyayana counted perfumery among the sixty-four arts in the Kama Sutra.

And yet, for all its influence, India has never produced a global fragrance house on the scale of Creed, Amouage, Byredo or Maison Francis Kurkdjian. This despite supplying many of the industry’s most prized natural ingredients, from Madurai jasmine and Mysore sandalwood to Assam oud and Kashmiri saffron.

So why has a country that has inspired and supplied the fragrance industry for centuries been unable to build a global perfume brand of its own?

According to Manan Gandhi, building a fragrance house is unlike building most consumer businesses. “The great fragrance houses are remembered because they created culture, not because they chased quarterly numbers,” says Gandhi, founder of Bombay Perfumery. “You can launch a product in a year, but building a perfume legacy takes decades.”

Abdulla Ajmal agrees. His grandfather, the late Haji Ajmal Ali, arrived in Bombay from Assam to trade in precious oud before opening a shop in Crawford Market in 1951. Today, Ajmal Perfumes has more than 350 stores across 70 countries, but it is headquartered in Dubai—which speaks volumes.

“India gave us our beginnings, Dubai gave us our horizon,” says Ajmal, the company’s CEO. “It is where we built the business, where we learned to think globally, and where we were exposed to a remarkable mix of cultures, tastes, and fragrance traditions. That environment shaped not only how we create fragrances but also how we see the world. It allowed us to take everything we inherited and introduce it to a much larger audience.”

When Ajmal was expanding internationally, luxury retail in India was limited, exports were more challenging, and the ecosystem around premium consumer brands was not nearly as mature as it is today. India’s contribution to luxury then—and some would argue, even now—was behind-the-scenes, as a supplier of exceptional raw materials and craftsmanship. Ajmal contrasts this with France, which, he argues, spent generations building the institutions that turned perfume into a luxury industry. “France invested in institutions, education, craftsmanship, retail, storytelling and global distribution for generations. Over time, consumers began associating perfume with French luxury,” he explains.

Astha Suri, founder of NASO Profumi, is a fourth-generation perfumer whose family spent decades in the B2B fragrance business before launching its own consumer brand in 2020. She believes the problem extends beyond infrastructure; it’s also about perception. “In our market, ‘homegrown’ is still too often viewed as merely artisanal or craft-y, rather than visionary, luxury-driven, or globally relevant,” she says.

Referring to Swedish label Byredo and American brand Le Labo, Suri says, “These brands became global because they owned their narrative unapologetically. Their countries stood behind them, celebrated them, marketed them heavily, and naturally, the world followed. The storytelling, the pride, the positioning—all of it played an equally important role alongside the product itself.”

That lack of confidence in homegrown brands is something Sarayu Hegde, one of India’s leading luxury consultants, encounters regularly. She recalls hosting a pop-up for an Indian brand known for its exceptional craftsmanship, whose ateliers have worked with some of the world’s leading luxury houses. Yet one client admitted that, while she admired the pieces, for the same price she would rather buy something from an international label.

“That conversation stayed with me because it highlighted how we often value the label differently from the craftsmanship itself, even when the quality is comparable. It illustrates why building confidence in our own brands is such an important part of the journey,” she says.

Both Hegde and Gandhi believe the landscape is changing. When Gandhi founded Bombay Perfumery in 2016, perfume was still seen as a niche category with little investor interest. Today, he says, investors have recognised the potential of Indian beauty and fragrance brands. Consumers, too, are far more discerning and less Eurocentric than they were a decade ago. “They are willing to pay for authenticity and originality,” he says, pointing to the Middle East as proof of how quickly a region can establish itself as a global force in perfumery.

“All the European brands have ‘Oriental’ or ‘French-Oriental’ launches now. Cutting-edge brands like Amouage set global perfumery trends and stand on par with niche European brands,” Gandhi says, adding, “I have no doubt that India will produce a global luxury fragrance house. We already possess the ingredients and the heritage.”

The Brand Problem

Step into Kannauj and you will recognise that scent. It’s the fragrance of childhood—braided into your grandmother’s hair, rising from the altars you bowed before every morning, dusted across your father’s skin in talcum before he left for work, and massaged into your own with night cream. Is it jasmine? Rose? Sandalwood? Perhaps something older; nameless, a scent inherited by generations of Indian homes.

Walk into one of the city’s distilleries and you’ll see the degs simmering over open flames, the bhapkas cooling in the courtyard, the air thick with steam—that same inherited scent being made much as it was 3,000 years ago. Natural, alcohol-free and therapeutic, India’s attars embodied what the beauty industry now calls “clean fragrance” centuries before the term existed. Today, brands from Bella Hadid’s Ôrebella to legacy perfume houses are embracing alcohol-free formulations as the next frontier of fragrance. In India, and large parts of the Middle East, it has simply been tradition all along.

“India has extraordinary botanicals, deep expertise and a longstanding relationship with fragrance. In many ways, we’re simply bringing our own story back into the spotlight,” says Samantha Ruth Prabhu, actor and co-founder of Secret Alchemist.

The brand doesn’t make attars, but uses grain-derived alcohol free of hexanes, phthalates, parabens, harmful synthetics, dyes and petroleum-based alcohol. “For years, India supplied some of the world’s finest ingredients, but the stories around them were often told elsewhere. Today, that’s changing,” Prabhu says. “What excited me about Secret Alchemist was the opportunity to celebrate that heritage in a modern way.”

Heritage alone, Gandhi argues, is not enough. “India has a rich heritage of crafting attars through the art of single-note distillation. A globally competitive fine-fragrance house, however, builds upon that foundation by creating complex compositions that evolve over time, with distinct top, heart, and base notes,” he says, explaining that to compete on a global stage, fragrances must comply with rigorous international technical regulations.

Ajmal believes the real challenge is what comes next: building a brand the world recognises. “The opportunity now is not to replicate France. It is to tell our own story with confidence,” he says. “If a brand can combine authenticity, consistency, patience, and global ambition, there is no reason it cannot be mentioned alongside the finest fragrance houses in the world.”

For Hegde, that confidence starts by owning where the ingredients come from. “Perhaps the opportunity now is not to move away from being the source, but to build powerful brands around it. To proudly say that the finest sandalwood, jasmine or vetiver comes from India, and to make that provenance part of the brand story. To me, the future lies in transforming what was once a hidden strength into a visible and celebrated identity,” she states.

Forest Essentials may offer the closest blueprint for what that looks like in practice. Over the past two decades, the brand has turned Ayurveda, Indian botanicals and mythology into a contemporary luxury proposition. Earlier this year, it was announced that Estee Lauder has acquired the company, making it closest to being on a global journey.

For Samrath Bedi, Executive Director, Forest Essentials, being disciplined about the brand story and staying true to it through decades of shifting trends is crucial.

“The Estée Lauder Companies’ relationship with Forest Essentials has evolved over nearly two decades. That’s not how global companies engage with trends; it’s how they engage with categories they believe have enduring relevance and long-term growth potential. More broadly, it signals increasing recognition that India can create globally resonant beauty brands rooted in its own heritage and intellectual traditions,” he says.

The signs are encouraging. Forest Essentials’ fragrance business continues to grow, while Bedi says consumers are increasingly choosing perfumes for their craftsmanship, quality and storytelling rather than simply whether a brand is local or international.

India already has the ingredients, the heritage and, increasingly, the confidence. Whether it can now build a fragrance house the world instinctively associates with India is the question the next decade will answer.

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