by Arup Chanda

KOLKATA, India, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- International luxury brands are now shifting their focus to new urban centers and smaller cities in India where they are stepping up their marketing and advertising strategies and where they are opening new showrooms for their products.

Traditionally conservative markets like Kolkata, capital of India's eastern state of West Bengal, Chennai, capital of India's southern state of Tamil Nadu, and Surat, the premier jewellery manufacturing city of India's western state of Gujarat are warming up to luxury brands, such as Louis Vuitton, Armani and Burberry in addition to their outlets in New Delhi, India's administrative capital, and Mumbai, India's financial and commercial capital.

This is because people in these cities now are becoming more affluent as a result of their economic growth. Residents in these cities can now afford to buy branded items which before they could only dream of possessing.

Some economic observers are saying that in the next six months, Surat, home to some of India's richest entrepreneurs in the diamond and textiles trades, will see the entry of half a dozen international labels that include Armani, Burberry, Tumi and Crabtree & Evelyn.

Some 1,500 km away down south, on the eastern coast, curious shoppers in Chennai are checking out the first Louis Vuitton store that opened a month ago.

Chennai is a great market, full of possibilities and perspectives, Geoffroy van Raemdonck, Louis Vuitton's south Europe president, said in Milan recently.

Two new luxury hotels in Chennai are offering space to luxury brands keen to go deeper into the country even as Louis Vuitton has identified its next stop Kolkata, where businessman Sanjiv Goenka is readying a 700,000-sq ft mall that has already leased out about 50,000 square feet of space to luxury brands such as Bottega Veneta, Bally, Burberry, Rolex, Porsche Design and Jimmy Choo.

Kolkata, Chennai, Surat have traditionally been conservative markets, with only a few rich buyers who can afford luxury goods. But now these cities are among the emerging hot destinations for international luxury and premium brands that cater only to the rich in the big cities in India.

"We think the time has come for a wider market for luxury brands in India," said Sanjay Kapoor, managing director of Genesis Luxury. His company markets brands such as Armani, Burberry and Canali in India.

Genesis has taken up space for half a dozen stores at a luxury mall in Surat being built by Virtuous Retail, a retail real estate asset platform sponsored by the Xander Group Inc.

It is also looking for space in Chandigarh, union territory in north India and capital to both north Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, Ludhiana in Punjab, and India's northern state Rajasthan' s capital Jaipur because several people from these towns frequent its stores in Delhi and Mumbai.

Clearly, the moneyed class in these small cities is now in the same position as those in bigger cities to spend on luxury items despite the sluggish economy and a slowdown in the overall consumer spending in India.

Three years ago, a NCAERs Rajesh Shukla and Future Capitals Roopa Purushothaman had said in a report entitled "Next Urban Frontier" that there could be a striking income shift in such boomtowns as Surat, Jaipur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Bhopal, Coimbatore and Kanpur.

"That trend is established now. The number of high-income households in boomtowns is growing at around 20 percent a year against 13.7 percent in the mega cities and boomtown households on average spend 12.7 percent more than mega cities on clothing," Shukla said.

In Kolkata, Sanjiv Goenka's mall, which will be operational early next year, will not only get shoppers from within the city but also from the entire eastern region.

Gucci too is exploring on having its presence in Kolkata. Louis Vuitton's chief representative in Asia, Tikka Shatrujit Singh, said that besides Kolkata, the French fashion giant is considering places like Hyderabad, Noida and Gurgaon to be their next marketing destinations.