Inside the new playgrounds of the rich and famous of India

For decades, the Indian elite has sought an escape from the private clubs of the RAJ era and the gymmatms, dispersed in the most chic districts of the country’s major cities, hill stations and cantial cities.

Access to these typically “English” enclaves, with their bell towers, their butler, their dark mahogany interiors and their rigid dress codes, has been reserved for privileged; The old money that traverses the corridors of power – think of business magnate, superior bureaucrats, royals, politicians or officers of the armed forces.

This is where the rich and powerful of India are going around for years, building share capital on cigars or squash and courtification cases during golf sessions. Today, these spaces can feel strangely anachronistic – relics of a bygone era in a country wishing to lose its colonial past.

While the third economy of Asia generates a new generation of creators of wealth, a more modern and less formal avatar of the club of private members – which reflects radical economic and demographic changes in India – is emerging. This is where new wealthy drag and do business.

The demand of such spaces is strong enough for the international Soho House channel to plan two new launches in the capital Delhi and in the south of Mumbai in the coming months. Their first offer – a club oriented on the ocean on the emblematic Juhu Beach of Mumbai – opened its doors six years ago and succeeded.

The chain is part of a multitude of new club entrants in the running to respond to a booming market in India.

Soho House began in London in the mid -90s as an antidote to high -end gentlemen clubs that bordered Pall Mall. He came as a refreshing concept: a more relaxed club for creators, thinkers and creative entrepreneurs, who could have had the impression of not belonging to the enclaves of the former aristocracy.

Thirty years later, the flourishing technological economy of India of start-ups and creators gave birth to a new rich who offered Soho House exactly another market opportunity of this type.

“There is growth in the young wealth of India, and young entrepreneurs really need a foundation to complain themselves,” Kelly Wardingham, regional director of Soho House, told the BBC. The “new rich people require different things” of what traditional gymmatomas offer.

Unlike former clubs, Soho House “cuts” or lets people enter their family inheritance, their status, their wealth or their sex, she says. Members use space as a paradise to escape the bustle of Mumbai, with its roof swimming pool, its gym and its private screening rooms as well as a plethora of gastronomic food options. But they also use it to stimulate the value of a diversified community of potential mentors and investors, or to acquire new skills and attend events and seminars.

Reema Maya, a young filmmaker, says that his membership of the house in Mumbai – a city “where we always jostle for space and a calm corner in a cramped cafe” – gave him rare access to the movers and the shakers of the Mumbai film industry – who could have been impossible For someone like her “without generational privilege”.

In fact, for years, traditional gymkhanas have been closed for the creative community. The famous Bollywood actor, the late Feroz Khan, one day asked a gymkhana club in Mumbai to be adhesive, to be politely refused, because they do not admit the actors.

Khan, taken aback by their snottanche, would have joked: “If you had watched my films, you would know that I am not really an actor.”

On the other hand, Soho House proudly displays the Bollywood star Ali Fazal, a member, on his coverage of internal magazine.

But beyond a more modern democratic ethics, high demand for these clubs is also a factor in the limited supply of traditional gymkhanas, which are always very sought after.

Files in most of them can extend “up to several years”, and the offer has not caught up to serve the “new harvest of self -taught businessmen, creative geniuses and high -end business honors”, according to Ankit Kansal of Axon developers, who recently published a report on the spice of new clubs.

This inadequacy has led to more than two dozen new club entrants – including independent entrants such as Quorum and BVLD, as well as those supported by world hospitality brands such as St Regis and Four Seasons – Opening in India. According to Axon developers, at least half a dozen others are on the way in the coming years.

This market, according to the report, increases to almost 10% each year, Covid having become a large turning point, because the rich have chosen to avoid public spaces.

Although these spaces mark significant changes, with their progressive membership policies and their arts patronage, the literary and independent music scene, they are still “sanctuaries of modern luxury”, explains Axon, with the admission given by the invitation only or by references, and costs several times more than the monthly income of most Indians.

At Soho House, for example, annual membership is 320,000 Indian rupees ($ 3,700; $ 2,775) – beyond most people can afford.

What has changed is that membership is based on personal accomplishment and future potential rather than on family pedigree. A new self -taught elite has replaced the former heirs – but access remains largely out of reach for the average Indians of the middle class.

In a way, the rise of these memberships reflects the history of post -liberalizing growth of India – when the country has opened up to the world and rejected its socialist moorings.

Growth has galloped, but the rich have become the largest, increasingly rich beneficiaries, inequalities have reached gaping proportions. This is why the country’s luxury market has exploded, even if the Haute Street fights against lukewarm demand, with most Indians without money to spend for anything beyond the bases.

But an increasing number of new Rich has a great business opportunity.

The 797,000 individuals from India in high worth should double a few years – a fraction of a population of 1.4 billion, but enough to stimulate future growth for those who build new playgrounds for the rich to relax, network and live the big life.

Follow BBC News India on Instagram,, YouTube, X And Facebook.