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It’s been a busy few months for Aryan Khan. Apart from writing and creating a show produced by Red Chillies Entertainment (which goes on floors March 2023), the 25-year-old has also been working on his first-ever venture: a luxury lifestyle collective that aims to provide curated experiences and products across fashion, beverages, and exclusive events. Among the many firsts, it’s also his first time being interviewed. As I sit across from the young co-founder who is sporting a black Off-White t-shirt and jeans, it’s clear he’s excited about all that is yet to come.
While most people expected Khan to follow in his father’s footsteps, he’s forging his own path as an entrepreneur. “The commonality between the family is that they believe in following what you’re passionate about. My mom is a producer, but she loves interior design. She’s made a successful business out of it because she loves doing it. My dad is an actor, but he also has a VFX studio, a production company, and because we loved sports, we got into it about 10 years ago. Now, there’s a global sporting franchise that’s expanding and doing really well. It’s not like you can either do this or that. I believe that if you like something and feel that there’s an opportunity that presents itself and a void you can fill, you can do a multitude of things. My parents are extremely encouraging about the new venture. When you know what you’re passionate about, you can make it your business. Because then business isn’t business anymore, it’s personal. And when business is personal, that’s when it really flourishes,” he explains while thumbing a bottle cap.
“How do you manage to do so much in a day?” I ask. “Between this and filmmaking right now, I’ve been entirely swamped, but in a good way. It’s extremely time consuming but a lot of fun. The trick is you don’t sleep and freeze time. I sleep about 4-5 hours a day,” he says.
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The idea of D’yavol came to Khan years ago, while he was still a student at USC in California. This was the pre-Zoom era: when the norm was to connect in person, Khan was constantly in touch with his Europe-based partners via FaceTime, building the foundation of D’yavol. In simple terms, it’s a brand with multiple verticals, the first two of which will be apparel and beverage. “As of now, we’re thinking of an apparel line that comes in March and it will be brought to the consumer by limited edition capsule collections, made available to them via drops on our web-store. As we go on from there, there will perhaps be more verticals,” reveals Khan.
“The idea is that this is one mother brand that can house—very comfortably—a whole set of verticals and products, all of which will sit in the luxury segment. And all of them will have a really strong focus on quality and heritage hallmarks of the independent products. But at the same time, we’re encapsulating them in a more edgy way,” chimes in co-founder Leti Blagoeva. “Aryan does not enjoy the word edgy, but you know, in a cooler, disruptive presentation to the world. So whether it’s the packaging or just the general vibe of the whole marketing communication, it has a very young outlook. I think it’s path-breaking because there really isn’t a parallel globally—in the sense that there’s no proper luxury brand which, from the get go, aims to operate across a range of different verticals in this way.”
Conceptualised with the help of his friends-turned-business partners Bunty Singh and Blagoeva, the brand has been in the works for about five years. Singh, a German businessman, first crossed paths with Khan’s father, Shah Rukh Khan, while he was shooting Dilwale in Bulgaria between 2014-2015. “When I first met his father, we hit it off and ended up keeping in touch. I met Aryan when I was visiting India, and perhaps it’s because they share the same genes, Aryan and I hit it off too. We had a lot of common interests: video games and wrestling, gadgets and technology. One random day, he picked up the phone and told me about the vision of what he wanted to create,” reminisces Singh.
Having been partners in both business and life for 23 years, working with Khan comes like a breath of fresh air for the Bulgaria-based duo. “Hanging around with him keeps us young because, you know, we’re not that young anymore. We’re partners in life, partners in business, partners in pretty much anything,” he continues. “To break it down, at D’yavol, I manage the creative design and marketing strategy, while Bunty is the product guy and ensures the quality is up there. Leti takes care of operations, and keeps us both in check because either he goes bonkers or I do,” shares Khan. “I’m the party pooper in chief I think,” laughs Blagoeva. It’s a “cool dynamic” as she puts it, considering the three co-founders come from different parts of the world, with different cultures, and belong to different age groups.
“Well, there’s a story,” enthuses Aryan Khan as he goes on to tell me about the legend of Robert Johnson, the Delta blues icon who was considered relatively untalented when he first started. In a span of two years, he travelled and trained under Ike Zimmerman and improved rapidly on the guitar. Years after his death, Johnson became one of the greatest guitarists to ever live, inspiring the likes of Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan.
“When he initially played for everyone, everyone told him he sucked. They derided him and said he would amount to nothing. When he came back, people said, “Oh, the only reason you've gotten this good is because you sold your soul to the devil.” But that wasn't the truth. It was his perseverance, his self-belief, his hard work. I feel whenever something is new and path-breaking, different and successful, people always find negative things to say. One day, I was speaking with Leti and she told me that the Bulgarian word for devil was d’yavol. I thought it sounded cool, so I said, “Why not?””
“We’re launching in India first but we’re an international brand,” says Khan. “Usually, when there’s a high quality product, it tends to alienate the younger generation and appeals to a more mature and discerning consumer. But when something has a really cool design, it tends not to be of the highest quality, therefore alienating the discerning crowd. Thirdly, when a company has a disruptive vision, sometimes people think perhaps it’s too different or out there and it doesn’t get too many eyeballs and never makes it mainstream. The idea we had was to bring these three things under one roof: a cool aesthetic, high quality goods and disruptive vision. Bunty being 45, me being 25, and Leti being somewhere in the middle, we wanted to create an age-agnostic brand that would appeal to each of us equally. I feel like we’re doing something that hasn’t been done before. There were other considerations as well. People get bored of things easily and always want the next best thing. Which is why we thought of multiple categories and verticals. So when you’re bored of something and want something new, we’ve got that too.”
The first product to get the ball rolling is D’yavol Vodka, a single estate, single grain vodka, launching in India in a partnership with AB InBev India. “We wanted the first product we came out with to be the most challenging in terms of developing and also translating the brand ethos. Our aim is to elevate the quality of whatever we make, either through innovation or a small, unique tweak, while maintaining craftsmanship. We thought vodka would be a good showcase of these objectives,” explains Singh. Deploying a grain-to-glass process, the spirit is made out of 100 per cent winter wheat grown on an estate in Poland. The vodka is also fermented, distilled, filtered and bottled in-house in one place, giving the co-founders control of the entire process, especially the quality.
“Vodka is actually a very simple spirit,” says Singh. “In fact, somebody told me, “Anything can be made into vodka as long as you keep distilling it.” So, we thought, how do we take this very simple spirit and elevate it?” This made them focus on the purity of the liquid, which was achieved by reducing congeners. “We’ve been able to reduce the methanol content by half of what the limit is set by the European Spirits Council. In the final phase, it was very important for us to differentiate our vodka from the others by the means of the palate and the mouthfeel. We went through dozens of filtration methods, ones which exist and ones that don't, looking for that elusive balance.” And the balance was achieved through an innovative filtration process: filtering the spirit through organic black Tahitian pearls.
When I ask him if he’s a vodka person, he jokes, “Very much, in fact if I could create one, I would.” “I think we’ve managed to create something that is definitely quite visually striking and different to the world of frosted white bottles that tend to dominate the landscape. And generally, I think it’s also like a cool balance of being edgy, but also feels very sophisticated as well. It is our baby, so we like it, but it’s differentiated on every level in terms of liquid as well as presentation. We actually have a closet in our house in Europe, which probably has version one to version ninety-eight of the bottle. So the packaging has evolved quite a bit,” says Blagoeva.
While the vodka hits shelves today, we’re keeping our eyes peeled for the luxury streetwear drop that comes in March-April 2023. “We’ve got some tentative designs and accessories as well. We’ll also look at the reactions of people and adapt accordingly,” says Khan. “Like what we’ve done in the beverage section, we want to have an aesthetic that’s a little bit different, with a strong personality and a major focus on the quality,” says Blagoeva. As for what one can expect, think everyday wardrobe staples such as T-shirts, hoodies, jackets, and blazers, but with a D’yavol twist.
We end the interview on a fun note, when I ask the co-founders if they could have a drink with anyone in the world, living or dead, who it would be and what they would talk about. While Blagoeva chooses Ricky Gervais and Singh picks George Carlin, both comedians, Khan asks a question in return: “Can it be someone fictional? I think I’d go for either Sherlock Holmes or Rick from Rick and Morty. I think it’s more fun than sitting down with someone who exists and talking about something that I could read in a history book. Holmes is so smart, and Rick has seen so many different planets, he’s crazy, and he’d be in his own state of permadrunk so he probably wouldn’t need a drink.”
Despite being all grown up and embarking on his entrepreneurial journey, it’s heartening to see he still retains his sense of humour and playfulness.
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