Meera and Karanveer Dureja started Banjaaran Studio out of Delhi in 2019 making shoes with Multani tiles pressed into the leather and Jaipur block prints running across the vamp. Six years later, that instinct — take a silhouette everyone already knows and run it through a filter that could only come from here — has stopped being a niche experiment. It's the thing 2026's Indian sneaker scene keeps circling back to.
Call it what the trade press has started calling it: the "Indianization" of the sneaker. Ikat weaves worked into leather panels. Ajrakh block prints where a swoosh or a stripe used to go. Kantha stitching — the running hand-embroidery technique that Bengali women have used on old saris for generations — showing up on sneaker uppers instead. It's not a gimmick anymore. It's a genuine design language, and it's showing up on shoes that sell out before most people even hear about the drop.
Two Studios, Two Very Different Bets on the Same Idea
Banjaaran leans into saturated color and pattern collision — Multani tiles next to ikat, Jaipur block prints laid over denim, all of it made by artisans the studio has worked with across Kutch, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh for going on half a decade now. Materials shift drop to drop: genuine suede, napa leather, printed faux leather, whatever the design calls for. Their bomber-style sneakers — the Bori, the Maati, the Chandrayan — run ₹5,490 to ₹6,990, which puts them well above a mass-market trainer but nowhere near what you'd pay for a European "heritage textile" collab doing the same trick with less craft behind it.
Kanvas takes the more explicitly couture route. Their Ajrakh Oxfords and block-printed kitten heels use hand-carved wooden block printing techniques straight out of Rajasthan, alongside Dabu indigo-dyeing, Pattachitra linework, and Bhil and Gond tribal art — the kind of regional art forms that rarely make it onto footwear at all, let alone footwear meant to be worn out, not framed. Their sneakers sit in the ₹3,900–₹5,850 range, with premium handmade pairs climbing past ₹23,000. Both studios describe the same instinct in their own words: "each piece brings in an essence of the people, region and culture of the place it's inspired from," as Kanvas puts it.
Why This Is Happening Right Now, Not Five Years Ago
The timing isn't random. India's sneaker market has gone from a niche import hobby to a genuine $2.8 billion industry, and the growth curve everyone's chasing runs straight through Gen Z buyers who grew up on global sneaker culture but don't want to just wear a copy of what's trending in New York or Seoul. "Glocal" is the word the trade press keeps using — global silhouette, local soul — and it's a real shift, not a repackaged buzzword. A high-top is still a high-top whether it's made in Portland or Jodhpur. What changes is what's printed, woven, or stitched onto it.
The Indian Sneaker Festival has become the clearest proof of concept. Limited artisan-collaboration runs at the festival reportedly sell out in minutes, and the event itself is scaling fast enough that its December edition in Gurugram is expected to bring in 80-plus brands and 30-plus artists working across music, fashion, and streetwear. That's not a trade show anymore. That's a cultural calendar fixture.
Is This Actually a Movement, or Are We Watching a Trend Report Get Ahead of Itself?
Here's the honest read: it's real, but it's early, and not every brand doing "Indian-inspired" sneakers is doing it with the same integrity. Banjaaran and Kanvas both work directly with artisan clusters and credit the specific regions and techniques they're pulling from — that's the difference between cultural design and cultural costume. If a brand can't name the region, the technique, or the artisans involved, treat it as decoration, not heritage.
The other honest read: at ₹23,000-plus for Kanvas's premium handmade pieces, this is not yet a mass-market movement — it's a premium one, closer to how Indian designer labels have always priced traditional craft. Whether it scales down to something a college student in Pune can actually afford is the real test of whether "Indianization" becomes a lasting category or stays a boutique flex. Right now, I'd bet on it lasting — the design language is distinctive enough, and Indian buyers have shown they'll pay a premium for something that actually looks like it belongs to them rather than a Western shoe with a bindi stuck on for the photoshoot.
What To Actually Do With This
If you're building a rotation that says something about where you're actually from instead of just where you shop online, start with one statement piece rather than a full closet swap — a single Ajrakh or Kantha pair does more work styled against plain denim and a solid tee than a whole outfit trying to match it. Mumbai's fashion crowd has already started pairing these with kurta-and-sneaker combinations at weddings and sangeet functions; Delhi's leaning harder into the streetwear-with-a-block-print angle for daily wear.
If artisan pricing isn't in your budget right now, the same instinct works on a global classic — a clean pair of Sambas or an Ultraboost in a neutral colourway gives you the canvas to build toward this later without committing ₹6,000 on a first try. Check what's in stock at SNKRS CART's adidas shelf if that's more your speed today.
For more on how India's own sneaker labels are carving out space against the Nikes and adidases of the world, we covered the broader homegrown movement in India's Best Homegrown Sneaker Brands of 2026. And if you want to go straight to the source, both Banjaaran Studio and Kanvas sell direct.
