Your next favourite scent isn’t in duty-free. It’s closer to home

It’s a curious cycle that Indian perfumery has gone through—from the land with its own rich tradition of perfumery to an exporter of ingredients prized in global perfumery to again one that harnessed nostalgia and familiar scents like petrichor, jasmine, and chai in fragrances you daubed on wrists from ornate little bottles. The winds of change, though, are blowing again, this time wafting with the smells of your favourite coffee shop but with a hint of tuberose and a side of storytelling that, while drawing from tradition, isn’t paying obeisance to it. Welcome the era of the homegrown fragrance brand.

It’s a market that’s being nurtured by an audience at home. Not because Indian consumers have stopped buying international perfumes but because they’re becoming more curious about what else is out there. Whether it’s a rising interest in unexpected scent notes like tea and cherry or just the active number of users on the Reddit forum /DesiFragranceAddicts, it’s clear there’s an expanding appetite for scent-based discovery.

The timing checks out. Statista puts India’s fragrance market at around $325.6 million in 2025, while Kearney and Luxasia expect the country’s luxury beauty market to jump from $800 million in 2023 to $4 billion by 2035. BeautyMatter, citing Kotak Securities, reports that only 6.2 per cent of Indians wear fragrance regularly—a figure that suggests enormous room for growth.

“What has changed is the Indian consumer,” says fragrance expert and founder of All Good Scents Rajiv Sheth. More travel, more digital communities, more specialist retailers—the exposure has built a generation that is increasingly chasing originality, craftsmanship, and founder-led storytelling over the safety of a big name. Discovery sets, fragrance wardrobes, and online communities have turned buying perfume into something closer to a hobby. “The real defining moment,” Sheth says, “will be when Indian fragrance brands are recognised globally because their perfumery is distinctive and relevant.” 

A distinctly Indian POV

Akshay and Abhishek Raina, the brothers behind Gurugram label Aeronot, see that willingness to experiment on the ground. “A few years ago, international brands dominated aspiration. Today people are actively seeking homegrown perfumes that offer originality and value.” South India, they add, has become one of the fastest-growing markets in the country.

Roughly 30 to 40 per cent of Aeronot’s online customers come back for repeat purchases, but its flagship stores in Delhi and Gurugram still matter, because people want to test perfume on skin and watch it evolve over a few hours before they commit. “The real opportunity,” Raina says, “is to create a distinctly Indian voice rooted in our culture, ingredients and storytelling while meeting global standards of quality and craftsmanship.” For Aeronot that means creating fragrances that are easy on the nose, familiar almost, to an aspiring scent hunter. Like their bestselling November, a floral and coffee combination that’s meant to evoke a coffee shop but with a recognisable tuberose-based heart. Or the more intense Oud Cashmere, a sweet, saffron-based scent that’s perfect for nights out.

Reframing the classics 

Interestingly, the new wave of fragrance houses isn’t interested in the familiar version of “Indian perfumery”. “When I looked at the landscape, I saw exceptional traditional practices, a thriving mass market, and the world’s leading luxury brands,” says Tanya Khurana, founder of Sept, a niche maison that splits its time between Delhi and Paris. “What I felt was missing was a contemporary fragrance house from India with a distinct, creative point of view.”

Sept doesn’t ditch the classics—it just refuses to use them the obvious way. Rose gets paired with prickly pear and cactus, oud with pistachio and honey, sandalwood with papyrus and black pepper. “It’s less about what notes you use,” says Khurana, “and more about the creative lens you bring to them.” Right now, you can sign up for the brand’s waitlist on Instagram to get a peek at their first few launches.

For Sharvi Mehta, founder of Mumbai-based Daily Compounds, the real shift isn’t what people wear—it’s why. “The traditional way of talking about perfume—classifying everything as floral or woody—is detached from how people actually live their lives,” she says. “People don’t wake up thinking, ‘I want to smell resinous today.’ They think ‘I need to calm myself before this meeting’ or ‘I want something that matches how energised I feel after the gym’.”

Daily Compounds builds its fragrances around function—their website event lists a ‘Neuro-Effect’ for each variety and specifies if the scent is meant to evoke focus, calm or alertness—and Mehta says her customers are living with them accordingly: testing against their routines, their skin and their climate, treating perfume less like a signature and more like a daily ritual.

The scent of the future

The modern perfume enthusiast is increasingly difficult to stereotype. They might walk out of duty-free empty-handed, only to spend the evening obsessing over a niche fragrance they stumbled across online. Online people obsess over everything from sillage and projection to the bottles that are best suited to an Indian climate.

Sheth believes that openness will define the category going forward. “What makes it Indian need not be one particular ingredient,” he says. “It can come from the founder’s memories, cultural references, climate, landscapes, sensibility, and way of storytelling.”

As consumers become more adventurous and homegrown brands more confident, Indian perfumery appears to be moving beyond the question of whether it can compete internationally. The more interesting question may be what a distinctly contemporary Indian fragrance language looks—and smells—like.