New Delhi: Clays Luxury Media has officially launched as a dedicated luxury-focused media house, aiming to serve brands across India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the Africa corridor. Positioned under the tagline “Create. Inspire. Elevate,” the company will offer customer publishing, white-label editorial products, consumer magazines, coffee-table books, digital media and bespoke brand experiences for sectors including automotive, high jewellery, fashion, watches, travel, hospitality, aviation, art, architecture and luxury real estate.
The company enters the market with over three decades of editorial expertise, more than 120 luxury brand partnerships, operations spanning over 40 international markets and experience delivering over 60 product launches. Clays Luxury Media said it aims to become the definitive creative and intellectual voice of luxury across the region by combining editorial excellence with strategic business intelligence.
Leading the company as Managing Director is Simon Clays, a publishing veteran with more than 35 years of experience in international consumer and customer publishing. Over his career, Clays has held senior editorial and publishing leadership roles at Media Transasia India, Dennis Publishing’s MAXIM, BurdaLuxury and Stuff magazine, overseeing luxury, lifestyle and travel publications across Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Speaking on the launch, Simon Clays, Managing Director, Clays Luxury Media, said, “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.”
Joining the leadership team as Executive Director – Capital & Strategy is Abhilash Puljal, who brings more than two decades of experience advising governments, multilateral institutions and private enterprises on cross-border trade, investment and market entry across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He currently serves as Co-Director of the LSE India Foundation and has previously worked with organisations including the UN World Food Programme, Afreximbank, the African Development Bank, the European Union and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
Commenting on the company’s regional ambitions, Abhilash Puljal, Executive Director, Capital & Strategy, Clays Luxury Media, said, “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.”
The senior leadership team also includes Sush Clays as Executive Director – Brand Alchemy and Sales, bringing experience across television news, public relations and luxury real estate, and Gitanjali Puljal as Executive Director – Marketing & Public Relations, who combines communications expertise with experience in philanthropy and the arts.
Supporting the executive team is an advisory panel comprising industry experts across diplomacy, aviation, luxury events, digital publishing, art, travel, automotive journalism, photography, design and visual storytelling. Members include H.H. Nawab Kazim Ali Khan, Lorraine Young, Girish Ramdas, Monica Jain, Jon Wall, Alan Strutt, Ashish Chawla and Richard Grace.
With its editorial heritage, cross-border strategic capabilities and focus on premium storytelling, Clays Luxury Media aims to establish itself as a leading partner for luxury brands seeking integrated publishing, content and experiential platforms across emerging international markets.
