Strategy Perspective Rare Atelier / New Category Entry
A Perspective on What Comes Next
Why Rare belongs on skin.
Rare Rabbit has built one of the most coveted wardrobes in Indian menswear. Now, it is time to give that man a confidence he can carry all along the day and leave an impression that lingers after he is gone.
Vaibhav Sharma
Brand Specialist · 5+ years building India's first premium aromatic syrup brandMasters in Business Strategy, Grenoble EM, France · Advanced Certification, MICA
June 2026
For Nishant Poddar, CMO
Rare Rabbit · Alum, IIM Calcutta
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Field Notes
Making the case for perfumes. Observations from an in-store visit.
Before building this document, I visited a Rare Rabbit store in Ahmedabad to make my observations on the latest store experience. What follows are honest field notes: what the brand is doing well, where the execution has gaps, and what it signals about where the biggest opportunity sits.
Observation 01
The store smells delightful.
The ambient scent in-store is genuinely pleasant and creates a feeling of class and luxury. This sets up the brand experience as a quiet luxury sensory experience while shoppers explore their interests. This experience is what can be transformed to a new category directly complementing the brand.
Observation 02
Great products need definite customer journeys.
Rare Rabbit stands out on its promise of great products: immaculate fabric, classic designs, beautiful packaging. However, when a customer comes in, they can sometimes get overwhelmed with what needs to be done. That is when a clear and intelligent customer journey navigation from the expected outcomes to right categories to right accessories to desired outcomes comes in place. Rare Rabbit products combined with a great in-store customer journey will improve the experience of the brand multifold.
Observation 03
Accessories are sidelined.
The wallets and belts were easy to miss: tucked away, not styled, not presented with the same intent as the apparel. The luggage sat near the store entrance with no clear sense of customer journey around it. These are categories that could meaningfully elevate the average transaction and reinforce the lifestyle positioning. A fragrance section near checkout, with its own dedicated space and visual identity, would do exactly what the accessories section currently does not: give the customer a deliberate reason to pause, consider, and add.
Observation 04
The assortment sends mixed signals.
The clean quiet luxury of the shirts and linens sits alongside print combinations that pull in a different direction entirely. The categorisation does not guide the customer through a coherent world. There is no felt sense of customer journey: no clear narrative from entry to exit, no moment of curation that makes a shopper feel like the store was designed for someone specific. For a brand with a strong visual identity in its campaigns, the in-store translation leaves something to be built.
The Signal
Fragrance elevates the store and the House of Rare.
A fragrance line truly complements the brand ethos of the House of Rare. It signals class, luxury, quiet confidence and something that wears and lingers on a confident Indian male.
A perfume is one bottle, one story, one decision. It is the cleanest expression of what Rare Rabbit stands for: considered, deliberate, and built for a man with a point of view. In a store that subtly expresses class and exuberance, fragrance gives the brand a quiet anchor of premium intent that everything else can orient around.
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Context
Why fragrance. Why now.
Rare Rabbit has spent a decade building something genuinely rare: a menswear brand that Indian urban men are proud to wear, proud to reference, and proud to gift. The clothes carry an unmistakable point of view: composed, considered, quietly confident.
Now, the case is stronger than ever to give them an accessory that adds on to their quiet elegant confidence: perfumes and fragrance.
The Indian fine fragrance market is at an inflection point. Premium men's fragrance is growing at over 9.6% annually and no big Indian fashion brand has been able to totally own this space.
India Perfume Market Size 2024
$2.35Bn
Expected to reach $4.08Bn by 2030, growing at 9.6% CAGR Source: Grand View Research, 2026 — grandviewresearch.com
Premium Segment Share 2025
58%
Premium dominates with 58% market share, driven by aspirational demand and gifting culture Source: IMARC Group, 2025 — imarcgroup.com
India Premium Fragrance Market 2024
$2.17Bn
Projected to reach $3.1Bn by 2033. Niche fragrances are the fastest growing segment. Source: Deep Market Insights, 2026 — deepmarketinsights.com
Internationally, every premium fashion house has a fragrance line. Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford, Giorgio Armani: fragrance often outperforms apparel in margin. The logic is identical for India's premium menswear moment.
The gap is not in the fragrance market but between Indian menswear and Indian fragrance: two categories growing in parallel, owned by the same man, with a brand that connects them and aligns with that man's identity.
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The Consumer
The Rare Rabbit man.
He is 27 to 38. He works in consulting, design, product, or his own venture. He dresses with intention, not effort. He has outgrown mass-market fragrance but is unable to find his perfect fit for his Rare Rabbit quiet luxury outfits.
He wears imported brands that often feel too strong for his taste or too alien to his identity. Indian brands feel too feminine or not close to the international identity he aspires to. What he wants is a fragrance that he can wear with ease, confidence and calm. His hand reaches without a second thought after dressing up for a confident day.
He already trusts Rare Rabbit's sense of style. The brand now has the opportunity to carry something that is clean, distinctive, unmistakably his.
Who He Is
27-38, urban, intentional.
Tier 1 metro. Income above 50K monthly. Brand-literate, not brand-obsessed. He chooses things for how they make him feel, not for the logo they carry.
Where He Is in Fragrance
Mass tires him. Niche confuses him.
He has grown from mass brands like Titan Skinn and adopted several international brands yet he is confused and lost. This identity space is where Rare Rabbit lives in apparel. That same space is empty in fragrance.
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Rare Atelier
Rare Atelier. Four fragrances, one collection.
Rare Atelier is the fragrance line of The House of Rare. Each fragrance maps to a distinct emotional register of the Rare Rabbit man. Product names are in sync with the classic, luxury, comfortable, quiet and confident Indian man.
01 / The Opening
First Impression
Eau de Toilette
Clean, sharp, morning-confident. The olfactory equivalent of a well-pressed white shirt. The scent for the man who walks into a room and does not need to announce himself.
Entry fragrance. Volume driver. The one his girlfriend buys him before he knows the range.
BergamotVetiverWhite MuskCardamomCedarwood
Proposed MRP: ₹2,999 · 50ml
02 / The Ease
Easy Sunday
Eau de Parfum
Warm, unhurried, lived-in. The scent for when he is not performing anything. Cedar and sandalwood with a depth that improves over the day: the fragrance equivalent of Sunday linen.
The warm counterpart to First Impression. Different posture, same man.
SandalwoodCedarAmberTobacco LeafVanilla Smoke
Proposed MRP: ₹3,799 · 75ml
03 / The Night
After Dark
Eau de Parfum Intense
Deep, confident, memorable. The fragrance that stays in a room after he leaves. Oud-forward but not traditional: this is oud the way Rare Rabbit does anything, referenced but never literal.
The premium tier workhorse. The fragrance men explain to other men.
Indian OudPatchouliDark RoseBlack PepperBenzoin
Proposed MRP: ₹4,499 · 75ml
04 / The Signature
The Rare One
Extrait de Parfum
The halo fragrance. Rare, limited, built with one of India's finest independent perfumers. Not a volume play: a brand equity statement. The bottle that gets noticed on a shelf.
Caps the collection and defines where the house goes next.
The Rare Rabbit store network is a strong strategic asset that gives a fast and efficient GTM across 200+ stores in 100+ cities.
Every fragrance launch is a physical, sensory event. A fragrance experience section bar in every store is a form of activation that will propel the launch and leave a lasting impression on the target audience.
Phase One
Months 1-2
Seed
10 flagship stores. Zero paid media.
In-store sampling bars only. Flagship stores in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune. Earned press and loyalty member exclusives. The plan is to build word of mouth before scaling this. Strategic outcome: deliberate scarcity.
Phase Two
Months 3-5
Expand
50-store rollout. Online launch.
A dedicated Rare Atelier page on thehouseofrare.com and partnership with a curated niche fragrance retailer for category credibility: Shoppers Stop, Nykaa Luxe, Sephora. Only exclusive invites and influencer gifting.
Phase Three
Months 6-9
National
Full network. First campaign.
Full store network rollout. Launch discovery kits: 3-scent sampler at 499 rupees, reducing entry friction. First integrated campaign extending "Wear Rare" into fragrance. Digital performance across metro Instagram and YouTube.
Phase Four
Year 2+
Build
Rare Rabbit as India's fragrance house.
New fragrance annually. "The Rare One by Rare Atelier" as a limited annual collectible. Travel retail through airport locations. Women's fragrance under Rareism as natural extension. Long-term target: fragrance as 15% of total brand revenue within three years.
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Why Me
What I bring to this specific room.
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Brand Strategy & Founder Experience
Masters in Business Strategy from Grenoble École de Management, France. Advanced Certification from MICA. I think simultaneously in brand equity, consumer insight, and unit economics. I know what a 4,500-rupee product needs to feel like, and what justifies that price.
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European Consumer Instinct
France is where fragrance culture is a daily conversation, not a marketing concept. Three years living inside that culture gives me a perspective on how the best fragrance brands think: one that is directly applicable to how Rare Rabbit should position in the premium tier.
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Premium Indian Positioning
Everything I have built is anchored in the same challenge this collection faces: how do you take something deeply Indian and make it feel globally credible? Not by erasing the origin, but by elevating it with precision. That is where the best Indian premium brands live.
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Sensory Credibility
I built imlé: a craft syrup brand using vetiver, rose, paan, saffron, and ginger as primary flavour identities. All my creative brand decisions are always led by feeling, not by thought. I know what aged vetiver smells like versus fresh-cut. I am a strong advocate of sensory experiences presented through great products, packaging and world class service, all amalgamating towards a world class experience and feeling of class and luxury for the consumer.
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Storytelling
With a background in theatre, membership of Toastmasters International, multiple personality development certifications and five years living in France, I think in narrative first. Fragrance marketing is almost entirely story. The campaign for "After Dark" lives in my head already, and I would genuinely welcome the chance to share it in person.
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Work Ethic
My value system is integrity, commitment, fun and feeling. I feel with heart, think deeply, craft ideas into manifestations and lead them into outcomes that feel simple, desirable and quality. I love innovation, take initiatives and have the courage to deliver greatness.
A Final Thought
Rare Rabbit: Premium luxury fashion brand from India, for the world.
India has always deserved its luxury fashion brand and that is what Rare Rabbit has delivered: a quality Indian fashion brand. My strong belief lies in serving Indians with the best quality premium and luxury Indian made products that they have been starved of for decades.
The next step to that, and something that will and must manifest, is Rare Rabbit for the world.
I assure you of my commitment towards this dream and would love to be a part of it, building it with the amazing team and leadership at The House of Rare.