When Manoj Samuel and Rebecca Samuel opened their first Vurve Salon a decade ago, India’s beauty landscape was already crowded with heavyweights. But the Samuels believed the market was missing something: a brand that could deliver the sophistication of a global salon experience while understanding the Indian customer’s evolving sense of beauty and self-worth.
“Back in 2015, premium meant imported,” Manoj recalls. “We wanted to show that Indian design, Indian service, and Indian professionalism could be just as aspirational.”
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That conviction — that a homegrown brand could compete not by cutting prices but by elevating experience — became the foundation for Vurve. Today, with more than two dozen locations across the country and a reputation for finely tuned aesthetics, Vurve has become one of the most recognisable premium salon brands in South India.
India’s beauty industry is vast — estimated at over $28 billion and growing at double digits — but notoriously price-sensitive. Building a high-end brand in this environment, Rebecca admits, meant challenging every assumption about what “luxury” means in India.
Clients from Tier-2 cities
“The Indian consumer is very value-conscious, but that’s not the same as being price-conscious,” she says. “If you deliver consistency, hygiene, empathy, and design — the full experience — they’ll pay for it. What they won’t tolerate is inconsistency.”
Over time, the couple learned that the premium customer in India isn’t defined by income alone, but by mindset. “We’ve had clients from Tier-2 cities who know exactly what global haircare trends are,” Manoj says. “So, for us, premium is about taste, not postcode.”
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Unlike the café or apparel industries, the salon business has brutal economics. Independent salons globally have survival rates of less than 40 per cent beyond five years. Franchises do better, but often at the cost of brand soul. Manoj knew early on that franchising wasn’t his route.
Vurve Salon in Bengaluru.
“We weren’t chasing scale for its own sake,” he explains. “We wanted every outlet to feel like an extension of our ethos, not a franchise operating manual.”
Average payback period
Instead, Vurve focused on a cluster-based expansion strategy — saturating one city before moving to the next. The result was operational control and brand consistency. “Our metric isn’t just the number of salons,” he adds. “It’s profitability per square foot, and retention — of both clients and stylists.”
According to industry peers, that obsession with quality control and measured growth has insulated Vurve from the boom-bust cycles that haunt India’s salon ecosystem. The average payback period for a Vurve location, Manoj notes, is under three years — a strong indicator of operational discipline in a labour-intensive business.
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If Vurve has one differentiator, it’s that the “salon” experience extends beyond grooming. Each outlet is designed more like a lifestyle studio — warm, minimal, tactile. “Design has to make you feel cared for,” Rebecca says. “From lighting to music, it’s all choreographed to create calm.”
This approach borrows from the ‘experience economy’ playbook — the idea that consumers don’t just buy services, they buy emotions. To measure this, Vurve goes beyond typical satisfaction surveys. “We look at retention rates, rebooking intervals, and feedback sentiment,” Manoj says. “Experience is data too.”
Vurve’s internal culture
That data-driven view of beauty experience has become part of Vurve’s internal culture — stylists are trained not only in technique but in empathy and emotional intelligence. “You can’t fake care,” Rebecca says. “You either believe in service or you don’t.”
The Indian beauty industry is built on people, and people leave. Attrition can destroy service quality faster than any competitor. Vurve’s approach to talent is almost contrarian: slow hiring, deep training, and shared ownership of success.
“Our team is our biggest capital investment,” Manoj says. “When stylists grow, the brand grows. We spend months training them before they touch clients.”
Technology, too, plays a quiet but critical role. The company tracks client preferences, stylist performance, and repeat ratios in real time. “If a stylist is overbooked or a client hasn’t returned, we know instantly,” Manoj says. “That allows us to respond like a luxury brand should — personally.”
Connecting with Gen Z
While Vurve’s early clientele skewed urban and millennial, its next phase of growth lies in connecting with Gen Z — a generation that discovers beauty trends on Instagram but values authenticity offline.
“Social media is not just about marketing,” Rebecca says. “It’s our listening tool. It tells us what our next clients care about — not just haircuts, but lifestyle, self-image, and inclusivity.”
Bridging the gap between digital engagement and salon visits is a challenge Manoj sees as central to the brand’s evolution. “Gen Z wants to experience what they see online — but without filters. That’s the gap we fill.”
As the beauty market consolidates, with major players eyeing regional brands, Manoj is clear that Vurve’s future lies in staying true to its DNA. “We’re not chasing size, we’re chasing substance,” he says. “If that makes us an acquirer or a target someday, fine — but for now, we’re building something enduring.”
Rebecca sums it up more softly: “Beauty is intimate. The moment you scale without a soul, you lose that intimacy.”
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