This Indian Niche Fragrance Brand Sits at Selfridges Alongside the World’s Most Respected Fragrance Houses

Indian perfumery predates most of what the world now calls luxury fragrance. Terracotta distillation equipment excavated from Indus Valley sites has been dated to roughly 3000 BCE, and Kannauj, the Uttar Pradesh town still known as India's perfume capital, has been producing attar through the traditional deg-bhapka distillation method for well over a thousand years, its trade flourishing under the Mughals and continuing, in smaller form, today.

For centuries, the country has supplied the raw materials—sandalwood, rose, jasmine—that built some of the world's most recognised fragrance houses. What it has supplied far less often is the authorship: the brand, the narrative, the person deciding what a scent should mean.

Sai Pogaru, who co-founded Rahasya with Utkarsh Vijayvargiya and Sachit Sood in 2024 after leaving a career at Meta and TikTok, set out to change the share of that equation that belonged to India. None of the three trained as perfumers; they spent eleven months immersing themselves in the craft before bringing in Singapore-based perfumer Kajal Gujar to translate their references into scent. Those references are deliberately unglamorous—a Delhi bookstore, a Bajaj auto in traffic, chai held between two hands while it rains—a departure from the palaces and exoticism the category has leaned on for decades.

Less than two years later, Rahasya became the first Indian niche fragrance brand to enter Selfridges' Oxford Street flagship, sitting alongside Tom Ford, Byredo, and Amouage.

Robb Report India spoke with Pogaru about authorship, perception, and what it actually takes to earn a place on that shelf.

Robb Report (RR): Why has the storyteller almost always been someone else, despite India supplying perfumery's raw materials for centuries?

Sai Pogaru (SP): We think authorship in perfumery happens on two levels. The first is more obvious: who's creating the fragrance. India has produced some of the world's most important raw materials for centuries, but relatively few globally recognised fragrance houses have been built here, and even fewer stories have been interpreted through the lens of Indian perfumers. The second is the stories themselves.

For a long time, Indian perfumery has leaned on a familiar vocabulary of royalty, palaces, and exoticism. Those stories have their place, but they aren't the only stories India has to tell. When we started Rahasya, we wanted both forms of authorship to come together. We deliberately chose to work with an Indian perfumer because we felt the stories would be better told coming from someone who instinctively understood the references—getting caught in the rain with a cup of chai, discovering an old bookstore, eating mangoes on a summer afternoon.

They're everyday moments that millions of Indians recognise but rarely see represented in luxury fragrance. For us, that's what modern Indian perfumery looks like: Indian stories, interpreted by Indian noses, speaking to the India people actually live today.

RR: Did coming from Meta, TikTok, and BCG rather than perfumery schools give Rahasya an edge a trained nose might have missed?

SP: Absolutely. Not being perfumers allowed us to ask different questions. We weren't obsessed with accords or trends. We were obsessed with what stories deserved to exist. We often compare this to what makes a successful restaurant. The chef is incredibly important—they bring technical mastery and translate ideas into something tangible. But the restaurant itself, the menu, the atmosphere, the point of view, the experience you're left with, is shaped by the people behind the concept. That's how we've always thought about Rahasya. None of us are trained perfumers, and we actually think that gives us an advantage. We aren't constrained by existing fragrance categories or by what a collection is supposed to look like. We start with stories, with culture, with the feeling we wanted someone to walk away with, and we aren't afraid to challenge the norms the perfumery world conforms to.

RR: How do you actively resist the reductive saffron-and-patchouli vocabulary Indian identity has long been boxed into?

SP: To be honest, we don't overthink this at an ingredient level. We don't resist ingredients. We resist predictability. One of the biggest challenges we face isn't actually fragrance — it's perception. There are still preconceived notions globally about what "Indian" smells like. Sometimes people expect something overwhelmingly rich, spicy, or difficult to wear before they've even smelled the fragrance. So every time someone experiences Rahasya and says, "This isn't what I expected," we see that as progress.

We don't start with ingredients, but rather experiences. If the story is about spending an afternoon in an old bookstore, we'll build around that. If it's about drinking chai while it rains or taking a road trip through the Himalayas, we'll start there instead. Sometimes those stories naturally call for sandalwood or saffron. Sometimes they don't. More broadly, we hope to see more Indian brands creating original olfactory identities. Inspiration is part of every creative discipline, but there's a difference between taking inspiration and reproducing someone else's work wholesale. If Indian perfumery is going to be recognised globally as a creative force, originality has to be part of the conversation.

RR: Why does specificity travel further than softening, given your hyperlocal references are landing at Selfridges?

SP: We've always believed that emotion travels further than geography. You don't need to have grown up in India to understand the feeling of finding a favourite bookstore, getting caught in the rain, or enjoying the thrill of chaotic rides near a coast. The details are Indian. The emotions are universal. Perhaps another reason for the resonance is because we're not particularly interested in making advertisements for perfume. We're more interested in creating a visual language for modern India, and perfume happens to be our medium. That's why our campaigns rarely revolve around products—we'd rather someone understand the atmosphere of a fragrance before they know what the bottle looks like.

We also like to leave room for humour and quirk. Fragrance has traditionally been presented as something quite serious and exclusive. We don't really see it that way. We see it as a form of self-expression, and self-expression should have personality. Luxury can be beautifully made without feeling distant. We should mention that we've been incredibly fortunate to collaborate with talented artists, filmmakers, and photographers across India and internationally who have helped bring these worlds to life.

RR: Where does India's attar tradition live in your work, and where does it end?

SP: We have enormous respect for India's attar tradition because it reminds us that perfumery has always belonged here. But we don't see our role as recreating history. We're much more interested in asking what Indian perfumery looks like today. What does modern India smell like? What stories deserve to exist now? For us, respecting tradition also means having the confidence to build on it and adapt it. Having said that, who knows—we may try to reinterpret how ittars can also be brought to the world.

RR: Who feels more urgent right now—the Indian diaspora discovering you at Selfridges, or the Indian consumer at home who hasn't yet?

SP: The diaspora discovered us first because they're often searching for a connection, but both audiences are equally important to us. The diaspora has been incredibly encouraging because many people tell us they've been waiting for an Indian brand that represents the country they know today rather than the one the world often imagines. At the same time, we've been receiving messages almost every day asking when Rahasya is coming to India. The honest answer is: hopefully soon. But we're also very conscious that being Indian doesn't automatically give us the right to serve Indian customers well. Our team is spread across Singapore and Australia, and the niche fragrance landscape in India is still developing. We want to enter thoughtfully, with the right retail partners, the right experience, and the right operational foundation. We always say we'd rather earn the right to launch in India than assume we've earned it simply because we're Indian.

RR: What does the next chapter look like? What would it mean for Indian perfumery if Rahasya wins?

SP: Walking through Selfridges and seeing Rahasya sitting alongside some of the world's most respected fragrance houses was a surreal moment. Not because we felt we'd made it, but because it validated something much bigger than ourselves. It showed that contemporary Indian stories deserved a place on that shelf. The responsibility actually grows from here. As more people discover Rahasya, we feel an even greater responsibility to contribute something original—to tell more specific stories, explore ingredients from India that have barely been used in modern perfumery, and continue building fragrances that couldn't have come from anywhere else.

If we succeed, we hope the biggest outcome isn't simply that Rahasya becomes a global fragrance house. We hope it becomes easier for the next generation of Indian perfumers and fragrance brands to be recognised not just as suppliers of beautiful ingredients, but as authors with their own voices.