Inside Raskuan: The Experience Design Shala Quietly Rewriting How India’s Affluent Now Shape Their Time

Above the cliffs near Cannes, as the film festival unfolded below, a group  of guests shared a lunch of foraged herbs, Sardinian cheese, and Corsican  myrtle tea. A local violinist played a movement from Massenet.

A small but influential studio or shala, as its team insists—Raskuan is  reimagining the contours of meaningful time. Raskuan isn’t easily defined.  It’s not quite travel, nor exactly hospitality. It’s something closer to  cultural choreography—a design-led practice rooted in tales, traditions,  and companionship.

In a world oversaturated with designer bags, private villas, and couture  from Milan, a new form of cultural expression is quietly gaining ground  among India’s affluent. It is less tangible, more textured and far more  telling. Experience design is emerging as a new cultural currency: where  storytelling, culture, and curation come together to create something  deeply personal and fulfilling. These experiences move through customs,  geographies, and emotions—woven with precision, purpose, and poetry.

Designed like a Nazm, Raskuan captures India's depth of emotions.

“We seek to place Indians at the heart of the world’s most iconic  moments—making them a part of the global conversation, not just its  observers,” says Yaruque Sadique, co-founder and partner at Raskuan.  He continues, “Excellence in quality, design and precision has been  considered a stronghold of Europe and Japan in the past 50 years. We set  out to change that, to reclaim India’s place in global culture and we have  just begun.”

An interdisciplinary studio founded by artists, designers and architects,  Raskuan operates at the confluence of cultural design and conscious  exploration. The studio designs fully hosted, end-to-end curated  experiences for those who seek depth, beauty, and meaning.

There is no corporate scaffolding here. No divisions between departments,  no echo of the cold sales funnel. Every person on the team is both  designer and host. If you call them, a designer picks up—who may just be  the same one who selected the fragrance that would match summer in  Hokkaido, or chose a train route through Scotland for its emotional  resonance. The charm lies in their size as well as the number of guests  they choose to serve. Everyone knows everyone. Including you.

India is evolving and so are its aspirations, especially among the affluent.  For them, possessions are giving way to the intangible pleasures of life.  There’s a certain kind of wealth to be found in deep conversations under  foreign stars, in the thrill of new passions in the presence of similar  spirits, in witnessing the best the world has to offer. A rising class of  Indian explorers—culturally attuned and globally fluent—are quietly  shifting how they signal status, identity, and taste. Less ostentation. More  orchestration. No longer satisfied with the conventional script, they seek  new fascinations, new rituals, and above all, new ways of being.

Raskuan’s model—slow and deliberate—stands apart in this recalibration.  Despite a decade of experience and a global network, the team takes an  average of 60 to 75 days to design each new experience. It does not rely  on packages or preset templates. Nothing is recycled. Nothing is rushed.  The time their guests offer them is sacred. “We consider it a form of trust  that cannot be returned in kind, only honoured,” says Yaruque.

When time seems to recline, a slow summer afternoon by Raskuan.

Guests are placed with as much care as the setting. Who you travel with  is as carefully considered as where you go. “We see every experience as a  social composition, not just a geographical one,” says another member of  the team.

Raskuan doesn’t do one-off commissions or luxury planning. Instead, it  creates small, complementary cohorts—never more than a few—brought  together for experiences that unfold like theatre: in acts, arcs, and mood.  Each is anchored in a global event, artistic movement, or regional  tradition. From spirit trails through Hokkaido to solstice rites in Tasmania,  no experience is ever repeated, and no detail is left unconsidered.

In A Summer Poured in Hokkaido,, their upcoming experience, the specific  bottle from Akkeshi’s Twenty-four Season series will be selected the night  before it is opened—to match the local weather and mood. All logistics,  including business-class airfares, every guest’s arrival in the departure  city, and even interim engagement, are planned. Nothing is left to  chance.

“It’s not escapism,” says a Raskuan participant, a Mumbai-based investor.  “It’s deep presence—within yourself, your group, and the moment. It  reorients you.”

Another guest described it this way: “It’s like being handed a chapter  from a book you didn’t know you needed and reading it with people who  get it.”

This emerging mode of immaterial possession—connective, immersive,  and reflective by nature—is especially resonant among second-generation  wealth holders and global professionals, who increasingly value time,  originality, and authorship over acquisition. “They’re not interested in  possessions,” says a Delhi-based cultural critic. “They’re interested in self - expression—through time well spent and stories well lived.”

The studio releases just a few experiences a year, often only weeks  before commencement. Yet they are mostly fully reserved, often by  returning guests who trust the studio’s rhythm as much as its design. A  small but devoted circle ensures most Raskuan experiences are spoken  for well before the world even hears of them.

“Look up,” one guest recalls being told, during their Australian stargazing experience. “That’s what they told us to do. I did and it was the first time  in years I felt truly small, in the best possible way.”

In a world eager to scale, Raskuan is staying small and designing big.

Raskuan is India’s first experience design shala.

Their upcoming experience — A Summer Poured in Hokkaido — traces the island’s spirits, terroir, and seasonal pairings. 

To be invited into this experience—or to speak with the team directly—call  [phone].