Clays Luxury Media debuts, bringing global editorial expertise to India

Clays Luxury Media launches today. It is a media house built for one thing: luxury. Under the tagline “Create. Inspire. Elevate.,” the company will produce customer publishing and white label products, consumer magazines, coffee-table books, digital media and bespoke brand events, with a client focus that runs across automotive, high jewellery, fashion, watches, travel and hospitality, aviation, art and architecture, and real estate.

Its vision, in the company's own words, is to become the definitive creative and intellectual voice of luxury across the India, Southeast Asia, Middle East and the Africa corridor, shaping how the world's most discerning audiences encounter, experience and engage with the best the region has to offer. The mission is more practical: craft stories, curate experiences, build platforms, and do it with the editorial excellence, strategic intelligence and cultural depth that luxury brands expect and rarely get in one package.

The numbers behind the launch signal readiness rather than ambition alone. Over 30 years of editorial craft. More than 120 luxury brand partnerships. Activation in 40-plus international markets. Over 60 product launches. It's a track record the company is positioning as the case for why it should be the 'go-to' customer magazine and white label media house for India and South Asia — with a broader regional footprint to follow.

Managing Director Simon Clays leads the launch. British-born, with more than 35 years in consumer and customer publishing, he has spent the bulk of his career launching luxury, lifestyle and travel titles across Asia, India, Europe and the Americas. The roles read like a map of Asian luxury publishing: Editorial Director at Media Transasia India, where he oversaw a portfolio of 16 major international consumer titles; International Manager for Dennis Publishing's MAXIM during its expansion into new markets that eventually spanned 40+ countries; and, more recently, Publishing Director and Director of Print Operations & Strategy at BurdaLuxury. Earlier still, he was relaunch editor of Stuff, the UK's top-selling gadget and high-end technology magazine.

“I've spent the better part of my career watching India's luxury audience grow more sophisticated, more global and more demanding of the media it consumes – and, frankly, watched the region be under-served by it. Clays Luxury Media is the house I've wanted to build for years: one where thirty-five years of editorial standards learned on the world's best consumer titles are applied, without compromise, to every customer magazine, coffee-table book and brand experience we create. We are launching in New Delhi because this is where the next chapter of global luxury is being written, and we intend to be the ones writing it.”

— Simon Clays, Managing Director, Clays Luxury Media

Abhilash Puljal joins as Executive Director, Capital & Strategy. For more than two decades he has advised governments, multilateral institutions and private enterprises on cross-border trade, investment and market entry across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He is the Co-Director of the LSE India Foundation, the body set up to bring the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) closer to India through fundraising, research collaboration and institutional partnerships. He is also a Partner and India Country Director at Expectation State, a UK-based boutique advisory firm and previously founded two advisory firms of his own. His client list includes the UN World Food Programme, Afreximbank, the African Development Bank, the European Union and the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office among others, with assignments across India, Asia and Africa. At Clays Luxury Media, his job is essentially architectural: turning a single-market media house into a platform that can scale across an entire region.

“Luxury in India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa is no longer a satellite market. It is setting its own agenda, and capital is following. For two decades my work has been about building institutional bridges between this region and the rest of the world, usually in sectors far less glamorous than this one. Clays Luxury Media is the same discipline applied to media: the commercial architecture to take a single-market house and scale it, corridor by corridor, into a regional platform for luxury."”

— Abhilash Puljal, Executive Director, Capital & Strategy, Clays Luxury Media

Sush Clays, Executive Director – Brand Alchemy and Sales, whose path from television news anchoring through PR into luxury real estate has put her in front of UHNI clients including Cartier, the BBC, World Bank, Airbus and Lufthansa. And Gitanjali Puljal, Executive Director, Marketing & Public Relations, Managing Trustee of an animal welfare NGO and a trained Bharatanatyam dancer, who has built donor networks, curated fundraising events and run the communications behind them.

H.H. Nawab Kazim Ali Khan — a former Minister of Travel, Culture and Aviation in Uttar Pradesh, India, and a Columbia University alumnus — oversees the house's direction on diplomacy and aviation. Lorraine Young, who has spent 35 years running events like Australian Business Week and The ANZA Melbourne Cup from her base between Australia and Delhi, guides its strategy for luxury events. Girish Ramdas, co-founder and chief executive of Magzter, directs the house's thinking on digital presence, distribution and paid readership.

Monica Jain, Director of Art Centrix Space and curator of more than 40 exhibitions with ties to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, directs its approach to the art world. Jon Wall, a journalist of 40 years who has written for Time Out London and Prestige Hong Kong among others, shapes editorial direction on travel and automotive luxury. Alan Strutt, whose photography has run in The Face, GQ and Hello! and whose subjects have included Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, oversees standards for international fashion and celebrity photography. New Delhi-based photographer Ashish Chawla directs the visual side as one of India's finest fashion and lifestyle photographers. Richard Grace, a graphic designer with a 30-year career launching titles at London's premier media houses, rounds out the panel, overseeing design and photography direction.