Twenty years ago, Kohler walked into a market where the bathroom was an afterthought, the last room designed, the last budget spent. Today, the American plumbing giant calls India its single most important international market outside its home turf in the United States, and David Kohler, CEO, Kohler, isn’t shy about saying so, “In our company, it’s the most important international market in the world.”
That’s a striking claim from a company that operates across dozens of countries. It captures a real transition underway in Indian homes, where a newly affluent, design-literate consumer is treating the bathroom not as plumbing but as a personal wellness sanctuary. Kohler has spent two decades building the infrastructure, and the brand equity, to cash in on that shift. The company was recently named to the ‘Great Place to Work 2026’ list of ‘India’s Best Companies To Work For’, and by its own account, it now holds the number one position among luxury brands in its category in the country.
From Showroom to Sauna
The scale of Kohler’s India operation is already substantial including 800 stores, three experience centres and four Studio Kohlers, with more on the way. Behind that footprint sits Kohler Concierge, an AI-enabled service supported by WhatsApp that stays with a consumer through the entire journey, online and offline, from browsing and selecting to purchasing, installing and servicing. The goal is a support system frictionless and elegant enough for a retail environment where shoppers move constantly between digital and physical touchpoints.
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Product breadth is expanding just as fast. Kallista, Kohler’s luxury sister brand, has entered the Indian market to widen the design community’s palette, and the company continues developing India-specific products alongside its global range.
Its Indian design studio, the CEO noted, has been rated the number one design studio across industries in the country, a signal that Kohler sees India as a design origin point, not just a sales territory. Staying relevant with that design and architecture community, he said, demands constant innovation: new colours, materials, finishes and technology, matched against a real estate boom spanning single-family homes, high-rises and hospitality projects.
Sustainability runs underneath all of it, framed less as a marketing layer than a founding principle. “Our mission is to help people live gracious, healthy and sustainable lives,” the CEO said, adding that the company has cut its environmental footprint in half over the past decade while working toward net zero.
Bathing as Ritual, Not Nostalgia
Nowhere is Kohler’s wellness thesis clearer than in its collaboration with Flamingo Estate, the Los Angeles-based lifestyle brand founded by Richard Christensen and his partner Harvey. What began as a cast-iron bathing product shoot on the estate’s organic farm has grown into an ongoing creative partnership, including an art installation in Milan and a recreated version of Christensen’s LA bathhouse, complete with a Kohler cast-iron bath and stained-glass windows.
The collaboration has also produced pollinator habitats designed to support bees, which Kohler now plans to manufacture and sell in India and other markets, alongside the showcased bath, set to launch in the country next year.
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It’s an eccentric pairing on paper, plumbing and pollinators, but it reflects a calculated read of where luxury consumers are heading. Showers may dominate daily routines elsewhere, but the CEO is emphatic that a real community still treats bathing as essential, calling it “a very important part of their wellness ritual.” He underscored that India specifically has a culture with a deep affinity for bathing. That same instinct, arguably, is driving Kohler’s next move: bringing Klafs, its German handcrafted-sauna brand, into the Indian market over time, extending the bathroom into a broader luxury-wellness ecosystem.
Twenty years in, Kohler isn’t treating India as a market it has already figured out. It’s only just getting to the interesting part.
