Reliance Industries Ltd’s luxury retail business is beginning to show operating leverage, helped by strong growth in premium beauty and global partnerships, even as several Indian designer labels in its portfolio continue to remain loss-making.
Reliance Brands Ltd (RBL), Reliance Retail’s flagship premium and luxury fashion business that houses over 50 luxury fashion brands, reported FY26 revenue of ₹3,494 crore, up 44.6% from a year earlier, while losses narrowed to ₹137 crore from ₹279 crore in FY25, according to the company's integrated annual report.
During the year, RBL absorbed five subsidiaries and joint ventures, including Genesis Colors and CAA Brands Reliance, bringing several more luxury fashion, designer-label and brand-management operations directly under the flagship company. Denim brand G Star also moved its business to another company, Ace Turtle.
RBL, which houses brands such as Burberry, Diesel and Paul & Shark, also entered new partnerships during FY26, including with Stella McCartney and MAX&Co., part of the Max Mara Fashion Group. The company operates 935 stores and 762 shop-in-shops across India.
RBL has brands across luxury fashion, premium apparel, beauty-adjacent lifestyle, home, jewellery, food service and children's retail, making it one of the most diversified premium and luxury retail platforms in India.
Sephora emerged as one of the strongest-performing businesses in the portfolio, with revenue growth remaining strong and profits more than tripling, highlighting the momentum in India’s premium beauty market.
Meanwhile, Reliance’s portfolio of Indian designer labels continued to struggle with scale and profitability despite years of investment.
Designer Rahul Mishra’s business reported revenue of ₹68.6 crore in FY26 but remained loss-making, posting a loss of ₹13.2 crore. Anamika Khanna’s AK-OK posted revenue of ₹21.8 crore and a loss of ₹9.9 crore.
Ritu Kumar posted largely unchanged revenue of ₹270.34 crore in FY26 and a loss of ₹34.47 crore, while Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla moved from profit to a ₹10.68 crore loss despite maintaining a revenue of around ₹135 crore.
Reliance Retail did not respond to Mint’s queries till press time.
Industry executives said premium beauty has emerged as one of India’s fastest-growing discretionary categories because of repeat purchases, gifting behaviour and lower luxury entry price points. Luxury fashion, by contrast, remains dependent on occasion-led spending, fit, merchandising and broader discretionary confidence.
Raahuul Kapoor, founding partner at luxury brand consultancy Luxury Ampersand Frolics Group said Reliance’s beauty portfolio is outperforming because beauty in the country has become an everyday luxury habit, while fashion remains "an episodic aspiration".
Kapoor added that affluent Indian consumers are increasingly gravitating toward quieter luxury, craftsmanship, rarity and highly curated labels rather than broadly distributed premium fashion brands.
Industry executives remain bullish on the long-term prospects of India's luxury market, pointing to continued growth in categories such as jewellery, watches, premium automobiles, beauty and high-end real estate.
“Fashion and lifestyle, however, are at a different stage of development. While demand is expanding beyond metro cities through e-commerce and digital discovery, building scale in luxury fashion remains more complex and requires a broader retail ecosystem, strong brand curation and consistent execution,” said Abhay Gupta of Delhi-based consultancy, Luxury Connect.
“For a conglomerate like Reliance, which has successfully assembled one of the country's largest luxury portfolios, the strategic evolution naturally shifts from rapid brand acquisition to long-term operational integration and stabilizing unit economics across a highly diverse stable of brands.”
India's fashion industry also suffers from structural constraints: very limited true luxury retail infrastructure, dependence on occasion dressing and inconsistent product-market fit, said experts.
"There are a handful of genuine luxury retail destinations, which makes scaling fashion much harder than scaling beauty. Beauty monetises aspiration weekly while luxury fashion in India still monetises aspiration seasonally. The winners over the next decade will be those who stop treating India as a logo market and start treating it as a connoisseur market," added Kapoor of Luxury Ampersand.
According to consultancy IMARC group, India's luxury goods market was valued at $10.6 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $18.8 billion by 2034 at a CAGR of 6.17%.
