Experience Design Is the New Cultural Currency for Affluent Indians
In a world oversaturated with designer bags, private villas, and couture from Milan, a new form of cultural expression is gaining prominence among India’s affluent. It is less tangible, more textured and far more telling.
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Artful & deliberate balance, that’s Raskuan’s quiet power
Experience design is emerging as the new cultural currency: where storytelling, culture, and curation come together to create something deeply personal and fulfilling. These experiences move through customs, geographies, and emotions-woven with precision, purpose, and poetry.
A rising class of Indian explorers-culturally attuned and globally fluent-are quietly shifting how they signal status, identity, and taste. Less ostentation. More orchestration. No longer satisfied with the conventional script, they seek new fascinations, new rituals, and above all, new ways of being.
“We treat an experience the way a director approaches film, or a composer, a score,” says Yaruque Sadique, Co-founder and partner at Raskuan, a pioneering experience design house or shala, as he prefers to call it.
Raskuan doesn’t do one-off commissions or luxury planning. Instead, it creates small, complementary cohorts-never more than a few-brought together for experiences that unfold like theatre: in acts, arcs, and mood. Each is anchored in a global event, artistic movement, or regional tradition. From spirit trail through Hokkaido to solstice rites in Tasmania, no experience is ever repeated, and no detail is left unconsidered.
“It’s not escapism,” says a Raskuan participant, a Mumbai-based investor. “It’s deep presence-within yourself, your group, and the moment. It reorients you.”
Another guest described it this way:
“It’s like being handed a chapter from a book you didn’t know you needed and reading it with people who get it.”
This emerging mode of immaterial possession – connective, immersive, and reflective by nature-is especially resonant among second-generation wealth holders and global professionals, who increasingly value time, originality, and authorship over acquisition.
“They’re not interested in possessions,” says a Delhi-based cultural critic. “They’re interested in self-expression-through time well spent and stories well lived.”
What’s unfolding is more than a passing trend. It’s a cultural reorientation, where wealth is measured not by what one owns, but by how one engages. These experiences are crafted to provoke thought, awaken curiosity, and foster emotional resonance.
Because experience, it seems, is no longer the backdrop to a good life.
It is the art form itself.
And as India’s cultural vocabulary expands, experience design is becoming its most refined expression of taste.
Raskuan is India’s first experience design shala.
Their upcoming experience – A Summer Poured in Hokkaido – traces the island’s spirits, terroir, and seasonal pairings.
To be invited into this experience-or to speak with the team directly-call (080) 4749 4967.
