Why Kering Brought Its Generation Award to India for the First Time

This week, Kering was in India, recognizing local talent by bringing its Generation Award to the country for the first time.

Paiwand Studio, a Noida-based startup founded by Ashita Singhal in 2018, won the prize for transforming pre-consumer garment waste into new handloom fabric and embroidery. The studio turns discarded textiles into new materials while supporting the weavers and artisans involved in their transformation.

Pune-based Without, founded by Anish Malpani, took second place for its patented process that transforms multi-layer plastic packaging and soiled textiles into materials for products including eyewear and packaging. A Blunt Story, based in Ghaziabad, came in third for its plant-based sole material, designed as an alternative to conventional footwear materials derived from crude oil, including EVA and TPU. The winners were announced at the Embassy of France in New Delhi on October 13.

The first-place winner received €50,000, while all three startups were offered an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy and France to meet Kering’s maisons, suppliers and industry peers. They will also have the opportunity to attend the ChangeNow Summit in Paris in 2027. Startups also gain access to Kering’s design and production teams, alongside mentoring in communication, finance and business growth. For Singhal, the recognition could help Paiwand Studio reach new customers.

“This really opens doors for us to a market that would otherwise have been very difficult to crack,” Singhal says. As a crafts-based enterprise, she sees her product as a natural fit for luxury companies. “The amount is great, but it’s the mentorship and the market access that we are going to get. That’s going to be the game-changer.” Singhal was previously a runner-up in the Circular Design Challenge in 2021.

The three businesses represent different approaches to circularity, from craft-based textile production to material innovation. For Singhal, Paiwand’s combination of craftsmanship and material reuse makes luxury a natural fit for its work, as well as a market in which the business could find new opportunities.

Launched in China in 2018, the Kering Generation Award identifies and supports startups developing solutions with positive environmental and social impact across fashion and luxury supply chains. Since the first winners were announced in 2019, the initiative has expanded to markets including Japan and Saudi Arabia, with the latter edition subsequently broadening its reach across Africa and the wider Middle East and North Africa region. Kering also launched a separate global award focused on jewelry two years ago.

Why India, why now?

India is not only a fast-growing luxury market, says Marie-Claire Daveu, Kering’s chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer, but also “one of the most vibrant ecosystems” for innovation, entrepreneurship and creative thinking.

India was among the “six pack” of growth markets highlighted at Kering’s Capital Markets Day in the spring, hosted by chief executive Luca de Meo, alongside Asia, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Mexico, and the Middle East and Africa. Daveu describes India as being “at the heart of the conversation” around innovation and entrepreneurship, making it a natural fit for an award seeking new approaches to the fashion industry’s environmental challenges.

De Meo also outlined plans to reduce Kering’s environmental impact, improve resource efficiency, invest in people and craftsmanship, and develop next-generation materials. According to Daveu, the approach also includes extending product longevity through repair and resale, as well as digital twins. These priorities provide a wider context for an award focused on circular innovation and solutions with practical applications across fashion and luxury supply chains.

Kering’s Indian partner is Reliance Brands Limited (RBL), which operates more than 1,855 retail doors across India and represents international luxury names including Burberry, Tiffany & Co., Valentino and Kering’s own Bottega Veneta. Daveu says RBL was instrumental in identifying the right partners for the award’s first Indian edition. For the first year in a new market, Kering chose to focus on one theme rather than opening the award to every area of sustainability. “If we are too broad from the beginning, we are not able to select perhaps the right people. So it's better to focus on one item, and after, of course, the following years we will be able to include other topics,” says Daveu.

Finding the winners

Nominations for the India edition came through the R|Elan Circular Design Challenge (CDC), the award’s exclusive nominating partner. Run by RBL, in partnership with the United Nations in India, the platform was launched in 2019 by R|Elan, RBL’s next-generation fabric brand, and Lakme Fashion Week to support emerging designers and businesses working on circularity. The CDC opened to international designers in 2023, attracting entries from Europe, the UK and Asia-Pacific. Jury members assessed entries in London, Milan and Paris, with virtual judging for Asia-Pacific.

“Our sustainability platforms and the Kering Generation Award India share an important belief: that the future of fashion will depend on our ability to support new ideas and the people developing them,” says RBL’s group VP Jaspreet Chandok. The India jury included Daveu; designers Manish Malhotra and Rahul Mishra; Sumeet Yadav, CEO of RBL; and Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode.

“I believe one of the greatest disservices we can do to sustainability is to define it through a singular, often Western lens, focusing primarily on material innovation, carbon emissions or waste reduction,” says Mishra. “Sustainability must also be understood through its social impact, particularly its ability to create employment, sustain livelihoods and empower communities.”

He adds: “International luxury groups such as Kering bring extraordinary strengths in research, technology and innovation. India brings generations of material intelligence, craftsmanship and community-based production. There is tremendous potential in bringing these two worlds together.”

India has a long history of upcycling, recycling and heirloom dressing, practices that have kept materials in circulation and craftsmanship at the heart of how people dress. “People learn by example,” says Daveu, pointing to the opportunity to create “beautiful ready-to-wear, with strong craftsmanship and a strong savoir-faire”, while maximizing resource efficiency through precision manufacturing. Chandok also sees circularity as connected to India’s history. “Circularity is not an entirely new concept for India. Reusing materials, repairing products and finding value in what already exists have been part of our culture for generations,” he says, adding that a new generation of entrepreneurs is combining that inherited knowledge with technology, material innovation and contemporary business models.

After the prize

Beyond the prize money and mentorship for the winners, Kering’s and the jury’s wider network can also help startups find commercial partners. Previous winners include Melephant, a Chinese startup developing bio-based dyes from organic waste. Its work with Chinese fashion group Ellassay illustrates how connections can help innovators take materials toward commercial applications. The company has also raised nearly RMB 10 million ($1.5 million), and its CEO, Liu Yuanyuan, was named a Tatler Asia Gen T Leader of Tomorrow.

Kering’s network can potentially connect startups with companies and innovators including Dior, Inditex and Studio Sativa. For Malpani, the award marks a milestone in building Without’s operations in India while developing solutions for international markets. “I hope we have our first two plants, our demo plant and our first commercial plant, built in India within the next five years, because we really believe in building in India,” Malpani says. “But we are a company in India made for the world, and this moment is a milestone that makes me really feel we’re on the way.”

However, scaling a new material takes time. Daveu points to the long process of moving from an initial conversation to integrating a material into a luxury supply chain. “It takes nearly 10 years between the first contacts, the fact that we have identified the startup and we have this kind of exchanges to be sure that the raw material has the quality to be integrated in our supply chain,” she says.

“Most of them would like to become really global. We are also able to create cross-fertilization between the previous winners and themselves, so we create a kind of network. Yes, it’s a network, but more than that, they can become part of a community of innovators in sustainability,” says Daveu. She believes the network connecting the startups with previous winners is one of the award’s most important assets, supporting their ambitions for global growth.

Whether these innovations make their way into the collections of Kering’s maisons will be the real measure of the award’s success. Daveu says Kering will return to India, signaling that this first edition is just the beginning.

Disclosure: Sujata Assomull was a member of the jury for the Kering Generation Award India.