Hair Masters Luxury Salon.
Not every business starts with a clear roadmap.
Sometimes, it starts with two people who see an opportunity and believe they can build something better.
That is the story behind Hair Masters Luxury Salon.
Danish Batra and Sahil Kapoor came from different professional backgrounds, but they eventually found themselves working towards the same idea: to create a luxury salon experience in India that could match the standards customers encountered in international markets.
What began in 2014 has since grown into a 100+ salon network, employing approximately 2,800 people and generating a turnover of around Rs 300 crore.
The company has built a particularly strong presence in Punjab and markets influenced by Punjab, while also expanding beyond India. Canada is now part of its international footprint, with Australia and New Zealand emerging as upcoming markets.
The scale of the business today is very different from where it started. But the foundation remains the same: two founders, a clear idea and the belief that a salon could offer customers something beyond the usual grooming experience.
The founders whose shared vision became the foundation of Hair Masters Luxury Salon.
Danish Batra and Sahil Kapoor did not enter the beauty industry through identical paths.
Danish came from a real-estate background. In 2014, at the age of 31, he decided to enter the grooming and beauty business and opened Hair Masters in Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi.
The first salon was modest in size, but the idea behind it was ambitious. The objective was to create a salon that offered more than basic grooming services-a complete experience built around professional expertise, premium interiors, service quality and attention to detail.
Sahil Kapoor was initially involved in the family real-estate business.
His perspective changed after a trip to Canada in 2014. During his visit, he observed how established salon businesses abroad approached their outlets, from equipment and furnishings to layouts and customer service.
The experience stayed with him.
What Sahil saw in Canada eventually became part of a larger thought: if international salon businesses could create highly organised, premium experiences, there was an opportunity to build something similar in India.
Danish had already started building Hair Masters. Sahil brought an international perspective and a complementary entrepreneurial approach.
Together, they began developing the business around a shared belief that a salon could be much more than a place for a haircut or beauty treatment.
It could become an experience customers actively wanted to return to.
Hair Masters' first location was a roughly 1,000 sq ft space in Punjabi Bagh.
The size of the first salon was not an indication of where the founders wanted the business to go.
The real challenge, however, was not opening another location. It was making the fifteenth, fiftieth and hundredth salon feel like part of the same brand.
Hair Masters has now crossed 100 salons across its network.
Reaching that scale required attention to the parts of a luxury service business that customers may not always notice immediately: employee capability, training, service standards, interiors, equipment, product selection and customer experience.
Over time, the company also expanded beyond hairstyling into makeup, beauty, skincare, spa and wellness.
That wider portfolio helped Hair Masters develop into a more comprehensive beauty and wellness business rather than remaining focused on hairstyling alone.
The financial growth reflects the scale of that expansion. Hair Masters has now reached a turnover of approximately Rs 300 crore.
If Punjabi Bagh was where Hair Masters took its first step, Chandigarh became one of the important chapters in its growth.
The company entered Chandigarh in 2015 and has since built a significant workforce in the city, with approximately 200 employees.
The city also reflects Hair Masters' broader strength across Punjab and markets influenced by Punjab. Consumer familiarity, regional networks and demand for premium grooming and beauty services have helped create a strong foundation for the brand.
Across the wider company, Hair Masters now employs approximately 2,800 people.
For a service business, that number matters for a simple reason: people are the product.
Every new salon requires skilled hairstylists, makeup professionals, beauty specialists, managers, trainers, reception teams and support staff.
As the network grows, the ability to develop and retain talent becomes just as important as the ability to open new locations.
Expansion creates a fundamental problem for service businesses.
Expertise cannot remain concentrated in a handful of people.
If a company wants to grow from a few locations into a large network, knowledge has to travel with the brand.
Hair Masters has therefore developed academies and training initiatives focused on hairstyling, makeup, haircutting, colour, chemical treatments and beauty services.
The aim is straightforward: create a talent pipeline while helping standardise the skills expected across locations.
For a business employing thousands of people, training is no longer simply a support function. It becomes part of the business itself.
The ability to teach, develop and reproduce service standards at scale can determine whether a salon brand remains consistent as it grows.
There is another part of the Hair Masters story that cannot be captured through salon counts or financial figures.
Danish Batra and Sahil Kapoor are business partners, but their relationship extends into their families as well.
Their wives are connected to the journey, and both women studied at the same college. It is an unusual personal connection between two families that also share a business journey.
Business partnerships are often described in terms of capital, expertise, strategy and responsibilities.
But building a business also involves trust.
There are difficult decisions, disagreements, periods of uncertainty and moments when long-term commitment matters more than short-term results. A deeper personal connection can add another layer to that relationship.
In Hair Masters' case, two families have become connected to a business that started with a relatively small salon and gradually developed into a much larger enterprise.
Sahil Kapoor's 2014 trip to Canada is also an interesting part of Hair Masters' international story.
What began as an observation during that trip eventually became part of the company's own international ambition.
Today, Canada is part of Hair Masters' international footprint.
The next phase points towards further expansion, with Australia and New Zealand emerging as upcoming international markets.
Moving into these countries is about more than adding new locations. It reflects the founders' ambition to establish Hair Masters as an Indian-origin luxury beauty brand with a genuinely international footprint.
Australia and New Zealand also give the company an opportunity to take its service philosophy into new consumer markets while building on the systems, training and operational experience developed through its growth in India and Canada.
More than 100 salons is an important milestone, but Hair Masters is already looking ahead.
The company's vision for 2028 is to reach 200 salons.
That means effectively doubling the current network and building an even larger presence in the organised luxury beauty market.
But adding another 100 salons will require more than finding locations and opening doors.
It will require continued investment in people, leadership, training, technology, operations and customer experience.
The larger challenge is consistency: building an organisation capable of maintaining the Hair Masters experience across hundreds of locations and multiple countries.
With Canada already part of the company's international presence and Australia and New Zealand in the upcoming expansion pipeline, the 2028 target could become another defining chapter in the business.
The growth of Hair Masters can be summed up in a few numbers: approximately 1,000 sq ft at the beginning, more than 100 salons today, around 2,800 employees and a turnover of approximately Rs 300 crore.
The company entered Chandigarh in 2015, established an international presence in Canada and is now looking towards Australia and New Zealand. Its next major target is 200 salons by 2028.
But there is more to the story than the numbers.
For Danish Batra and Sahil Kapoor, every stage of growth has brought a different test.
The first salon had to prove that their idea could work.
The next locations had to prove that the idea could be repeated.
Crossing 100 salons meant proving that the business could be scaled.
Now, the next 100 will test something else: whether Hair Masters can continue to grow while keeping the experience and identity that the founders set out to create in the first place.
That is where the next chapter will really be measured-not just by how big Hair Masters becomes, but by how well it holds on to what made it successful.
Looking at Hair Masters today, it is easy to focus on the scale of the business.
More than 100 salons. Approximately 2,800 employees. Around Rs 300 crore in turnover. An international presence in Canada. And plans to enter Australia and New Zealand.
But the story goes back to two people who saw an opportunity to build something different in India.
In 2014, Danish Batra and Sahil Kapoor began working towards a vision that went beyond a single salon. Their first location in Punjabi Bagh was only around 1,000 sq ft, but the ambition was much larger.
Today, that ambition has become a sizeable organised beauty business.
The next phase is about taking Hair Masters further-beyond expanding its salon network and towards establishing an Indian-origin luxury beauty brand with a strong international presence.
Canada is already part of that story. Australia and New Zealand are emerging as the next markets.
Getting there will require continued attention to talent, training, technology, service standards and customer experience.
Because the real test of growth is not simply how many locations a brand can open. It is whether customers walking into a Hair Masters years from now can still recognise the experience that the founders set out to create in 2014.
What began with two people and an idea has become a 100+ salon, Rs 300 crore business with approximately 2,800 employees.
The next chapter is about seeing how far that original idea can travel.
200 salons by 2028 is the vision.
And the global journey is only getting started.
