India’s lux­ury retail mar­ket is enter­ing a new phase of expan­sion, but a short­age of premium mall space is emer­ging as the biggest hurdle for global brands, accord­ing to Bharti Real Estate man­aging dir­ector (MD) and chief exec­ut­ive officer (CEO) S.K. Sayal.

Bharti Real Estate is bet­ting on that gap with The Mall at World­mark in Delhi’s Aero­city, a luxury retail des­tin­a­tion sched­uled to open by March 2028, Sayal told Mint. Part of Bharti Real Estate’s broader $2.5 bil­lion World­mark 2.0 devel­op­ment the project will fea­ture a 3 mil­lion sq. ft mall, about 1 mil­lion sq. ft of high­street retail, lux­ury brands, res­taur­ants and indoor enter­tain­ment.

“The eco­nomy is grow­ing, the num­ber of mil­lion­aires is rising and people are trav­el­ling much more. The real ques­tion is whether we are ready with the real estate,” Sayal said.

India’s lux­ury mar­ket has long been under­served, with many brands oper­at­ing just one or two stores to cater to con­sumers across the coun­try.

“Today, one or two lux­ury brand stores are serving the whole coun­try. That will change over the next few years. As con­sump­tion grows and the right real estate becomes avail­able, brands will expand with mul­tiple stores,” he added.

Sayal’s optim­ism is echoed by recent industry research. A BCG-Altagamma report released in early July said rising afflu­ence and evolving con­sumer beha­viour are

reshap­ing the coun­try’s lux­ury land­scape, while pro­ject­ing the global per­sonal lux­ury mar­ket to grow 2-5% in FY26, driven by broader life­style spend­ing and local wealth.

Sep­ar­ately, Knight Frank said India accoun­ted for 2.8% of the world’s ultra-high-net­worth indi­vidu­als (UHN­WIs) in 2026, up from just over 2% five years earlier. The coun­try’s UHNWI pop­u­la­tion is pro­jec­ted to increase from 19,877 in 2026 to 25,217 by 2031, point­ing to a stead­ily expand­ing base of lux­ury con­sumers.

The com­ments come amid tight­en­ing sup­ply in organ­ized retail real estate. Accord­ing to real estate con­sultancy Anarock’s latest research, retail­ers leased 4.1 mil­lion sq. ft. of Grade ‘A’ mall space across the top seven cit­ies in the first half of 2026, while only 0.9 mil­lion sq. ft. of new sup­ply was added. As demand has out­paced new con­struc­tion, vacancy in the top malls has fallen to 6.7%, the low­est level since 2010, imply­ing there is short­age of qual­ity retail space for both domestic and global brands.