Praveen Kenneth went from being the youngest CEO in the history of Publicis Groupe India at 29 to co-founding Law & Kenneth, always backing ideas that challenged convention. Today, as the founder of Beautiful India - a global luxury brand unveiled in Paris during the 2024 Olympics - he is on a mission to redefine what India means on the global stage.

Kenneth reflects on his journey from an advertising executive to an entrepreneur to a luxury brand evangelist. He talks about why the brand is positioned as ‘conscious luxury’, and how brands from India ‘can and must claim their place on the world stage’.

“Advertising is high stress and emotionally draining, but building a brand is a whole other game,” Kenneth admitted, contrasting his early career in advertising with the challenge of running Beautiful India. As a brand owner, he said, you can’t just “call up thousands of customers” when something doesn’t work - you have to live with the consequences. That shift, he shared, gave him “deep respect for clients” and taught him that building Beautiful India is less about selling and more about “creating a cultural movement.”

He credits the late Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop and his former co-founder at Law & Kenneth, for inspiring the idea. “She told me, the day you can bottle the idea of India, you can create an impact on the world,” he recalled - a thought that became the brand’s North Star.

On positioning luxury as inclusive rather than elitist, Kenneth explained, “Luxury doesn’t have to mean exclusion. Simplicity itself is a luxury today.”

He described Beautiful India as a brand that elevates universal human experiences rather than separating people through price or status.

Launching at the Paris Olympics, he said, was both symbolic and strategic. Competing with European heritage houses like Dior and Chanel required more than great products it demanded purpose. “We couldn’t just launch products; we had to launch ideas about living consciously,” Kenneth said.

For him, Beautiful India embodies what he calls 'mindful luxury' not just ethical sourcing, but a way of living with awareness. “Goodness and common sense don’t need brand ambassadors,” he said. “They just need to be lived.”

Ultimately, Kenneth hopes Beautiful India proves that a brand from India can stand tall globally not by imitating others, but by staying rooted in authenticity and consciousness.

This chat first appeared in the October issue. Click here to buy the copy and unlock the whole conversation.