When the final match of the Champions League 2022 was announced with Real Madrid playing the underdog team Liverpool at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, three friends in Delhi immediately took to their WhatsApp group. As avid supporters of the Spanish team, they didn’t want to miss this match for anything. One of them arranged for premium tickets for the game by phoning a prominent English football club’s manager, who was a close associate of his father’s. Another offered his private jet for the last-minute quick dash across the ocean. The three of them took off in style with comfortable beds, champagne and exclusive private service at 35,000 feet to arrive in France, watch the match, take the requisite selfies, celebrate the victory of their team by painting the town red, and then fly back to Delhi two days later.
A Mumbai family, bored with the food at home, hired a Michelin Star chef from a Gordon Ramsay restaurant in London. Another just flew to London in their jet for dinner at a Michelin restaurant. At the beginning of the pandemic, a couple planning their wedding anniversary ordered a private jet to bring goodies from Europe to India in time, just before the lockdown began.
Booking a Rolls Royce for 50,000 pounds a day in London is no big deal; a Dubai-based businessman with work interests in Andhra Pradesh, who rubs shoulders with the high and mighty in Delhi, gives his children £1,000 as daily allowance when they are holidaying together, just to be left alone.
Big Fat Indian Wedding Power can overwork diplomats and make chatwalas happy. A recent, almost week-long, mega wedding of a prominent industrial family held at a European destination sent the embassy staff into a tizzy. They did not have enough staff to process visas for nearly 200 guests and staff that included valets, cooks, photographers, bandwallahs and planners.
To oblige the wedding party, even senior diplomats at the embassy set aside their official work to stamp visas, since the wedding date was close. After the pandemic, Europe needs money, and who knows it better than rich Indians? Of course, the entire embassy staff, including the ambassador, was invited along with an offer of a private jet for their exclusive use, which was politely (perhaps, regretfully) declined.
In a country where the top 1 percent of the population owns 33 percent of the country’s wealth (according to the World Inequality Report 2022), India’s affluent elite are deploying their monetary assets to live life king-size. With the country’s ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNIs) getting younger every year, their demands and preferences are changing. Data by the Hurun Research Institute for the Hurun Global Forty and Under Self-Made Billionaires ranks the under-40 self-made billionaires in the world in terms of US dollars. India’s 40-and-under Self-Made Rich List 2021, it ranked the entrepreneurs as possessing a wealth of over Rs 1,000 crore.
How are rich young Indians spending their billions?
The Moolah-Makers
Though India’s economic inequity is undeniably large, the country isn’t far behind other superpowers in terms of its billionaires’ wealth. This is evident from UK-based estate agency Knight Frank’s Wealth Report 2022, where India ranks third in the number of billionaires globally in 2021. The report stated that the number of UHNIs in India increased by 11 percent in 2021—the highest growth in the Asia-Pacific region, and globally only behind the US and China.
Leading the charge in this regard is technology. India’s Silicon Valley, Bengaluru, saw the highest rise in the number of UHNIs in 2021 at 17.1 percent, followed by Delhi (12.4 percent) and Mumbai (9 per cent). “During the turbulence of last few years, India’s rich have only got richer. Our government’s regulations are far more favourable to the rich than people lower down the economic order,” says a private banker. She cites the increase in the wealth of India and Asia’s top two richest individuals Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani as examples.
Globally, luxury items continue to obsess high spenders. ‘The State of Smooth: Unpacking Luxury in 2022’, a survey done by payment services company Klarna, noted that an equal percentage of Gen-Zers and millennials (63 per cent) shopped for luxury items more than Gen Xers and Boomers in 2021. Eight out of 10 of these buyers were excited over brands pitching innovation and new tech; they seek out offerings on social media and now the metaverse—over 80 per cent of Gen-Z buyers and around two-thirds of millennials get their luxury buys from social networks. The young rich are also eco-conscious; sustainability is a priority for nearly 60 per cent of them.
A quarter of the respondents were price-cum-quality conscious, arguing that sustainability means long-term savings. Gen Z has a “buy-less buy-better mindset”. Zoomers are on a revenge shopping spree: fine wines, premium cars, Haute jewellery and personal care are leading desires. India’s beauty and personal care market, estimated at $25.9 billion in 2020, is projected to reach $32.7 billion by 2023. In the third quarter of 2021, Mercedes-Benz sales went up 99 per cent; Maybach GLS 600 cars that cost Rs 2.43 crore each were pre-booked before the launch. A quarter of Lamborghini buyers are from tier 1 and 2 cities.
Young Indians have turbocharged the market for luxury homes too, especially in Goa and Shimla. From August 2020-21, India Sotheby’s International Realty website recorded selling over 50 homes, costing more than Rs 80 crore each. Indians are buying high-end dwellings in big metropolises such as London, New York and Paris. After the pandemic poured cold water on million-dollar weddings, the industry is looking at a big revival this year. Even last year, only 17 per cent of weddings were postponed, according to the WedMeGood Indian Wedding Industry Report 2021-22, of which over 40 per cent stuck to their original big fat wedding plans. Getting hitched at the Umaid Bhawan in Jodhpur can cost between Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore. Zoomers are tech-crazy too: On February 5, 2022, Abhijeet and Sansrati said “We do” on a scenic 3D beach is possibly India’s first metaverse wedding.
An Education in ‘Exclusivity’
While everyone and their aunt know about the spending tastes of the Ambanis and Adanis, many other rich Indians aren’t far behind in spending big on travel and offbeat experiences. Everything goes as long as it is exclusive. Take the student of an Ivy League college in California, who wanted to take five of his besties skiing to Aspen to celebrate his 21st birthday. He demanded the use of the family jet, to be sent all the way from Mumbai, to take the friends from California to Colorado. When his father asked him to hire a private jet in America itself, the son refused, stating that even if the ride was private, it had been rented by others previously and wasn’t ‘exclusive’ enough.
A Bengaluru-based startup founder married his college sweetheart earlier this year. The besotted husband decided to go all out to pamper his wife through their first year of marriage. Aware of her love for the iconic Hermés Birkin handbag, he hired a fashion student as a paid intern to search for different-sized Birkin bags from around the world. As the demand for these pieces is far higher than their supply, stocks of fresh styles vary from store to store. Each boutique has its own collection, with infrequent delivery times and a variety of colours and finishes.
For this reason, keeping track of particular styles is a tough task. Nevertheless, the industrious intern secured all four sizes of the original Birkin—two from America, one from Singapore and the fourth from France—in time for her boss to gift his wife one every ‘monthaversary’. For the fifth month, having run out of ideas, she discovered the coffee-table sculptures of Birkin bags by artist Gayatri Sekhri and suggested her boss buy that as an exclusive gift for his wife. “It was the most fun assignment I had in a long time,” says Tanya Singh, the intern. “I can’t believe I got paid to shop for others!” she beams.
Where romance was the driving factor for her employer, the cementing of one’s ‘status’ is the end goal for some. A Gurugram-based online gaming mogul wanted to provide his children with the absolute best in life. So when his son turned five, he decided to move lock, stock and barrel to England. He bought a mansion in Ascot County, best known for its affluent residents and famous horse races, and had it re-done to suit his lifestyle with a swimming pool, garage to house his fancy cars, and automated systems. Most importantly, he began to cultivate friendships with influential people who lived in the area—all towards the purpose of getting his son enrolled at Eton College, the prestigious private school when he turned 11. This IIT alum candidly admits that attending Eton was his childhood dream, and he was willing to pull out all stops to send his son there.
Spending on one’s children’s higher education at elite universities abroad has been a socially accepted practice for years, yet the new trend is for rich Indians to send their children abroad even for schooling. Though Eton is notoriously competitive with only a 23 per cent acceptance rate, Swiss boarding schools with a more lenient acceptance policy are seen as the place to be for many Indian parents. This was the case for Pankaj and Radhika Oswal, Indian billionaires worth $1.5 billion, who spent a large part of their life in Australia. They sent their younger daughter to tony Swiss boarding school Le Rosey, touted to be the world’s most expensive school with a fee of $130,000 a year. Soon after, the daughter was allegedly bullied and the parents who were no stranger to courts (they had earlier won nearly $145 million in reparations in a suit against the ANZ Bank in Australia), sued the school, as they felt it was “now fast becoming a playground for rich students to do as they please”.
Private is the Way to Go
If the rich do not aspire to study or live abroad, they certainly want to travel to foreign shores. According to a 2020 report by Forbes India, Indians are “dropping as much as £100,000 (approximately Rs 81 lakh) for a single travel-related experience”, with the most popular destinations being the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, Iceland and Spain. Of these, the ocean country of Maldives is a hot favourite, owing to its lenient Covid policies and promise of luxurious privacy. Neeraj Seth, the Cluster Director of Marketing Communications and Public Relations at Kandima Maldives and Nova Maldives resorts, points towards their ‘Castaway Island’ experience as a prime example. If one signs up for this, they can spend time with loved ones on a secluded island for an entire day while being waited on hand and foot.
The Forbes report also notes that UHNIs, especially the young, blow up 55 per cent of their income on ‘discretionary spends’, or ‘whims and fancies’, which can range from simple experiences like booking an entire theatre for a movie screening or paying for a celebrity to have dinner with you. Siddharth Sood or MC SID, a popular emcee for weddings and private events, narrates an incident: “A couple wanted me to look at their guests and rap about what they were thinking! So, I created a new act along the lines of another performer ‘Harry Mack’ from New York, where I asked the audience a word that comes to their mind and then rap on the spot using those. All clients now want something ‘exclusive’ as the usual just isn’t good enough.” This is personalisation at its best.
India’s wellness industry has also benefited from the rise of the young rich Indian. A plethora of boutique fitness and yoga studios, gyms, Ayurvedic resorts, and private fitness systems have contributed to this market’s net worth is Rs 490 billion in 2019, according to FICCI. This includes staycations at wellness resorts across the country and abroad, as well as experimental fitness routines like aerial yoga and pricey health habits such as eating organic or farm-to-table produce, both at home and in restaurants.
Fashion and related accessories are also popular with India’s swish set, with a number of foreign luxury brands setting up shop in India. Data from McKinsey’s FashionScope report noted that India’s apparel market is worth $59.3 billion in 2022, making it the sixth-largest in the world, comparable to the UK’s $65 billion and Germany’s $63.1 billion.
The point to note, however, is that none of the uber-rich crew is shopping for themselves or booking their own travel experiences. They are being catered to by a number of boutique services, personal shopping services, stylists, trainers and concierge services. Another increasingly popular service among the rich and famous is that of exclusive clubs. Emanda Vaz, Assistant Vice President - Luxury Residential Business, Embassy Group, an ultra-luxury gated community in Bengaluru, located off NH7 and 12 km from the city’s international airport, highlights the BLVD Club, a private luxury club located on the premises. She says, “Customers are more demanding than ever and have more power than they used to. They are smarter and have higher expectations. After all, we taught them! Superior customer service is distinguished by going above and beyond what the client anticipates. You need to make every customer feel important and enhance their experience rather than treat them like another task for the day.”
Live Life King-size
Spending money on themselves and their loved ones is clearly a matter of priority for rich Indians, but what about spending on others? In a report by Oxfam India at the 2022 World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda summit, it came out that the combined fortunes of Indian billionaires more than doubled during the pandemic. Consequently, the wealth of the 10 richest Indians is enough to fund school and higher education for children in the country for 25 years. It also highlighted that an additional 1 per cent tax on the richest 10 per cent can provide the country with nearly 17.7 lakh extra oxygen cylinders, while a similar wealth tax on the 98 richest billionaire families would finance Ayushman Bharat, the world’s largest health insurance scheme, for more than seven years.
These numbers combined with the data collected by the India Philanthropy Report 2022, a joint study by global consultancy Bain and Company and non-profit Dasra, show that those worth Rs 50,000 crore or more gave away only 0.09 per cent of their wealth in the financial year 2020-21. This figure is much lower than the UK (0.44 per cent), China (1.48 per cent) and the US (2.52 per cent). So are Indians holding on to their massive wealth unreasonably and selfishly?
Aditya Gupta, the Founder of Rug Republic, an Everest and adventure traveller, does not believe so. He says, “Beyond a line, the marginal value of money decreases and of time increases. Being money-rich without being time-rich is meaningless. So, money gets spent on things that win you time and/or enhance the quality of time—whether at work, leisure or in between.” While it can mean different things to different people, for Gupta it translates into investing in people and exciting work ideas. “The urge to buy objects becomes less important. I think I am in that transition phase right now. The other change is the willingness to support causes where you see someone driving it passionately. It becomes a surrogate way of returning to society. I support individuals rather than large NGOs who have a lot of funding access.” Gautam Adani too recently pledged to donate Rs 60,000 crore to charity on his 60th birthday. So, change in this regard is definitely at hand.
Ultimately, one cannot judge a person on how they spend their hard-earned money—whether prince or pauper. A guiding principle for everyone, no matter their worth, seems to be this mantra of Yash Vardhan Swami, a nutritionist based in Chandigarh. He says, “I like spending ‘extra’ money on quality and experience. If I am able to give excellence to my work, I expect the same from others and I’m willing to pay more for it,” he says, adding our brain is conditioned to a particular kind of experience, so with the expectation of quality, our experience also improves. “It is important to spend on saving time as well, like avoiding queues for flights. This saved time enhances our productivity and can be used to multiply our time further,” says Swami. He’s right about the fact that time is money and money is access. So, if you have the moolah to spare, just spend it.
According to Knight Frank’s Wealth Report, India ranks third in the world in terms of billionaire population in 2021. The number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals in India increased by 11 per cent in 2021 to 145 billionaires, the highest growth in the Asia-Pacific region.
The India Philanthropy Report 2022 shows those worth Rs 50,000 crore or more gave away 0.09
per cent of their wealth in 2020-21. This is much lower than the UK (0.44 per cent), China (1.48 per cent) and the US (2.52 per cent).
According to a report by the Kotak Group and Ernst & Young, the number of super-rich those worth over Rs 25 crore in India saw an increase of 16 per cent in 2013-14. The report counts 1.17 lakh Indians as super-rich.
Data presented by Oxfam in 2022 reveals that the combined fortunes of Indian billionaires more than doubled during the pandemic; consequently, the wealth of the 10 richest Indians is enough to fund school and higher education of children in the country for 25 years.
“Being money-rich without being time-rich is meaningless. So, money gets spent on things that win you time and/or enhance its quality. To me, it means investing in people and exciting work ideas.”
Aditya Gupta, founder of Rug Republic
“I like spending ‘extra’ money on quality and experience. It is important to spend on saving time, like avoiding queues for flights. This saved time enhances our productivity and can be used to multiply our time further.”
Yash Vardhan swami, nutritionist