Voices Pushpesh Pant Ravi Shankar Utkarsh Amitabh Anu Aggarwal Sathya Saran mata amritanandamayi MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI march 24 2024 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Packing a Punch McKinsey predicts Indians could become the fourth-largest global travel spenders by 2030, making five billion trips The $15.04 billion Indian Luggage Revolution has sparked a lifestyle war between brands as the number of innovations and travellers keeps increasing. But there are no losers in this fight By Chandreyi Bandyopadhyay M eet Shrabani B, a lifestyle professional in Delhi who sources super-expensive indulgences for rich people. Rich people make difficult clients, always asking for the impossible because they can pay for it, like grilled tarantulas for dinner. Shrabani gets them bit roles in Bollywood films; a courier guy with a couple of lines or a cop who gets shot in the first half and keels over crying for help. Some demand a dinner date with a chartbusting popstar. Shrabani’s most challenging request, however, came from a client in Surat who demanded a tanned leather vintage suitcase made in the late 1800s by Finnigan Ltd as a wedding present for his son. The bride had one already passed down by her , grandfather who lived at a time when wealthy Indians travelled to England by boat and packed volumes of clothes and accoutrements for various social occasions. She found one at last, with a reputable London dealer in Picadilly who had the genuine article, complete with lock plate stamped with its name and Manchester, the city of its manufacture. Or take Manas T, from Yamunanagar, a relatively small town in Haryana. He managed to get admission to a Delhi college and needed a new suitcase. The old metal trunks and suitcases, which his family used for travelling by train and bus, just wouldn’t do. Like many of his friends and classmates, Manas went online and bought a trendily designed white Mokobara strolley with tan wheels. You can’t blame the new FOMO luggage lovers, because one has to ‘belong’ to be noticed. The portmanteau describes the luggage logic of 2024 with smart travel features and AI power. Who wouldn’t want a rideable suitcase scooter such as an Airwheel SE3S with cool tyre-style wheels and a built-in motor that turns the piece into an electric scooter with a maximum speed of 8 miles per hour; the owner can buzz about sitting or standing. Press a button and the telescoping handle slides up, making it a regular suitcase. A video of Shilpa Shetty zooming through Mumbai airport on her motorized suitcase with her daughter in her lap took the travel metaphor to its next level for bemused Net natives. A smart suitcase with a built-in USB powerbank with a high-speed output for fast on-the-go charging with changeable colours of the LED-lit logo, all powered by a long-lasting rechargeable battery is outstanding travel porn. How about an AI-powered smart suitcase that follows you? Here comes the ForwardX Ovis with AI-powered self-driving technology that will dog your steps at the airport and railway station. It has sensors to control its autonomous movements and adjusts to your walking speed without hitting obstacles. It boasts of two USB ports and a built-in power bank juiced up with a detachable lithium battery . Once upon a time, luggage used to be stodgy reliable and , enduring. Except for the rich, who prized their large legacy Louis Vuitton Travel Trunks (some still do, but strictly for use on private jets and yachts), the middle class preferred the durability of impedimenta over style. Not anymore. Any show-offy product of the New Indian Luggage revolution has become a status symbol across classes. It is bold. Colourful. Stylish. Has innovative shapes and designs. In short, it is exciting. Or at least that’s what Indian luggage makers are trying to convince themselves and their buyers. It seems to be working. “ vibrant A transformation is underway driven by a , convergence of rising aspirations, tech-savvy consumers and expanding reach of e-commerce,” notes Saurabh Srivastava, Vice-President of Amazon Fashion India. “There is a shift from traditional, functional luggage to products which are as stylish as they are practical. This reflects the evolving needs of modern travellers,” Srivastava adds. Indian luggage brands have transformed to stay in the game of making travel fashionable. An influx of newly designed, packaged travel luggage with novel designs, hues, technology and accoutrements is changing the way we travel. The Look is the ticket. “Innovations such as printed luggage for users seeking self-expression, ultra-lightweight bags for effortless mobility and , differentiated designs, shapes and materials help our consumers express their style while travelling comfortably ,” says Neetu Kashiramka, Managing Director and CFO, VIP Industries Limited. The luggage and bags market in the country is worth $15.04 billion in 2024, according to a report by Statista, a global data and business intelligence platform. The main takeaways from the report: 87 per cent of the luggage sold will be non-luxury in 2024; only a small percentage of Indians buys deluxe luggage; India’s growing middle-class and increasing travel aspirations are driving a surge in demand for premium luggage and totes. Even if the share of luxury luggage buyers is low, the volume is high, considering the popula- suitcases over cheaper options, more for practical purposes than snob value, since they last longer. She travels in India and overseas frequently; a McKinsey reports predicts Indians could become the fourth-largest global travel spenders by 2030. They will make five billion trips in 2030. They will spend about $410 billion on travel—a surge of over 170 per cent from $150 billion in 2019. “My husband loves his Tumi, while nothing short of a nuclear holocaust can separate me from the Goyard Trolley Case he got me for my 30th birthday says Prerna K, an IT ,” startup owner in Bengaluru; Tumi is the go-to luggage brand for male Indian and Asian businessmen and corporate travellers. While Goyard is the last word in quiet wealth luggage, only a few stores in Europe tion—the Wealth Report 2023 predicts India’s HNIs with net worth over $30 million will rise by 58.4 per cent in the next five years. Indian tourists splurged $23 billion in 2018 to over $45 billion in 2022 abroad. Hence, a luxury luggage and suitcase brand like Rimowa, whose products go for lakhs of rupees, is doing brisk business after opening at the Ambaniowned Jio World Plaza; a piece of cabin luggage from the brand costs upwards of $1,500 while check-in suitcases cost $2,000 and upwards. “This is a boon for people like me,” says Gauri Malhotra, a brand conscious marketing professional in Mumbai. “Until now, if a wheel came off my Rimowa, I would have to wait to go to Dubai to get it fixed.” She prefers expensive and the US sell its masterpieces. Online luggage retail has made looking, choosing and clicking on that stunner of a suitcase as easy as buying a banana in the Bahamas. E-commerce companies are thumbing their nose at established luggage purveyors with a smorgasbord of selections in materials, design, colours and tech features. Smart luggage with GPS tracking and smartlocks is seeing an uptick in demand: “Consumers search for products with more features,” elaborates Sudhir Jatia, Managing Director at Safari Industries Ltd. Features like TSA locks, interior organisers for convenient packing and smoother wheels are things “Polycarbonate luggage offers ample impact resistance, durability, scratch and water resistance, and it's lightweight. These factors matter, to keep the unique handmade and fragile souvenirs I carry from around the world, safe.” to look for while buying luggage. Luggage is shedding its baggage of conventional past. The VIP brand has been restyled and remarketed by founder Dilip Piramal and his 37-year-old daughter Radhika, who engineered the company’s transition from a luggage to a lifestyle brand, after sensing that travellers, especially Gen Z and Alpha, want to look and feel like a VIP . Like Rajeshwari Datta, a 32-year-old Bengaluru-based game developer, who invested in a set of Mokobara trolleys, though not a VIP for her , recent Europe trip. “Looking for a new luggage brand, I found one that perfectly matched both my budget and quality expectations. Its exciting range of colours and TSA locks proved invaluable during multiple transit check-ins, and gave me peace of mind that my belongings were secure. The best thing about the suitcases was the 360-degree Hinomoto wheels, which helped us smoothly and noiselessly lug them along the cobbled streets in Italian towns,” Datta recollects. Wheels get protection too now; Amazon sells shock-absorbing silicon wheel covers that safeguard suitcase wheels and makes pulling bags on uneven surfaces effortless. Fashion designer Maya Pillai bought a set of American Touristers in pastel recently “Planning an . international travel, we looked for a durable, lightweight bag in vibrant but pastel colours for easy identification on the airport carousels. We went for anti-theft and anti-breakage features, a level of protection often unavailable in cheaper options,” she says. Who, what and why is driving the change? The Indian luggage turbocharge is being fuelled largely by buyers from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cites, which saw an average salary jump of 22 per cent last year. Wealth is pouring into the economy from the Turn to page 2 Vidya Shree, co-founder of experiential travel company SocialTravelPass “For international travel, we looked to buy a durable, lightweight bag in vibrant but pastel colours for easy identification on the baggage belt. We went for anti-theft and anti-breakage features, often unavailable in cheaper options.” Maya Pillai, fashion designer
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