Foreign luxury brands played a large part filling the cultural vacuum left in China after Mao. In India, it?s domestic designers who are gathering fabulous riches. Photo: Shutterstock
?The world is changing, the economy is changing, the geography of luxury is changing,? said François Le Troquer in 2012, back when he was managing director of Cartier UK. The comment came at the official launch of a Cartier short film in which the Cartier panther travels across China and India, big developing economies whose luxury markets have since evolved in different directions.
India and China opened their doors to foreign retail in the late 20th century and both countries slapped a high import duty and tax on luxury goods, making the products much costlier to buy domestically.  While in the last three decades, Chinese luxury sales have risen to occupy the number one spot worldwide at 32 percent, India lags behind, one of the last big frontiers with vastly untapped potential for luxury consumption. Currently just seven percent of the Chinese luxury market, the Indian luxury market is growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 25 percent. The country has added around 500 new ultra high-net-worth individuals (those with investable assets of at least $30 million excluding personal assets and personal property) annually over the past decade, and over the next decade that number will double to approximately 1,000 per year.
Undoubtedly both countries? luxury markets and broader ec...