From Taboo To Trend: India’s Expanding Sexual Wellness Landscape

There is a tired cliché about India being the land of the Kama Sutra whilst simultaneously treating sex like it’s a sinful secret wrapped tightly in taboo — but that adage feels flimsy in the face of the country’s rapidly evolving sexual wellness landscape.

With the introduction of homegrown sexual wellness brands offering a multitude of toys and tools aimed at amplifying pleasure, and the proliferation of sex educators and activists across social media, there is no denying that we are currently at the forefront of the sexual revolution that endeavours to dismantle existing societal shame around sex.

This feels especially necessary in the face of statistics such as the one released by contraceptive brand Durex, whose 2019 ad campaign revealed that only 70% of Indian women were reported as having had orgasms during sex. Not only is this a dismal statistic, it also highlights the problems that sex educator and author of the seminal sexual pleasure bible Come As You Are, Emily Nagoski attributes to waning sexual desire between long-term couples.

“A woman is more likely to be able to own a sex toy if her partner is supportive of her vibrator use,” says Leeza Mangaldas, a popular voice on social media focusing on sexual health and wellness, and founder of the sex toy brand Leezu’s, by way of explaining how entrenched societal norms and traditional gender roles are an obstacle in the path towards sexual liberation.

It is precisely these attitudes that Mangaldas hopes to correct through her work on social media, which functions as a judgment-free zone for those seeking sex education.

“It is so profoundly life-altering as a woman to be able to discard the shame you’ve been conditioned to feel around your sexuality and desire and to be able to take charge of your pleasure,” she says.

Brands such as Mangaldas’s Leezu’s and MyMuse, co-founded by husband-wife duo Anushka and Sahil Gupta in 2020, are helping to foster a sense of openness when it comes to seeking sexual pleasure, by offering a range of sex toys and lubricants that can be discreetly purchased from their respective retail platforms.

Whilst both sets of founders have the pleasure of the Indian people firmly at the core of their brands, they’re also each responding to a growing trend in the Indian market, whose sexual wellness sector was valued at $1535.5 million in 2017, and is projected to swell to $2095.4 million by 2030.

Among MyMuse’s customers, 91% were reportedly first-time sex toy users, while 38% of their male customers purchased toys for their female partners, according to an internal study by the brand, which also revealed that a large chunk of their customer base stems from outside of India’s Tier 1 cities.

What this tells us is that Indians across the spectrum are both re-embracing their sexual roots and becoming increasingly open to new sexual horizons. “Couples who use toys and lube are very likely to be having [open] conversations [about sex]. Using these products during partnered play is almost impossible without talking about what you’re doing together.

This is one of my favourite things about the experience of using our products,” says Mangaldas, emphasising that deeper communication is the key to enhanced pleasure in the bedroom.

Whilst MyMuse offers a sleek, highbrow aesthetic that might be familiar to those who have patronised high-end international sex toy brands, Leezu’s approach has been more localised (the brand’s maiden offering is a dual-ended massager titled Pyaari) and pop-colour saturated, the existence of a plurality of companies offering sexual pleasure tools speaks volumes of where both the Indian sexual pleasure market, and its consumers, are headed.

A growing availability of sex toys has helped this cause but it is changing social mores that have created the space for these conversations to bloom. In a now-infamous interview with Karan Johar on his eponymous chat show, actor Vidya Balan answered, “We like it, want it, and need it just as much as they do,” in response to a question about what she wished men knew about women when it comes to sex.

On the heels of that conversation, Bollywood offerings such as Veere di Wedding, Amazon Prime’s Made in Heaven, and Netflix’s Lust Stories have helped prompt frank conversations about sex — sans the taboo.

The proliferation of dating apps such as Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder has revolutionised the way that people find and seek their life partners, with a greater emphasis now placed on compatibility.

“Instead of thinking about desire, think about pleasure,” is Nagoski’s advice to couples looking to keep the magic alive. Happily, the newest numbers from Durex report that this might be exactly what Indians are now focussed on doing: 56% of Indian respondents reported being satisfied with their sex lives, which signals a significant 21% rise since 2006.

“Toys stand to reintroduce an element of play, a quality so often missing in adult life. Playfulness, fun, novelty, joy, self-discovery. These are key ingredients in fuelling desire, all of which toys offer exceptionally effectively,” says Mangaldas. This pace of change might seem glacial to those who have been (im)patiently waiting for India to have its sexual coming-of-age, but for couples now equipped with what they need to go the proverbial distance in the bedroom, it couldn’t have come a moment too soon.

This has been adapted for the web from an article published in Manifest’s December 2024-January 2025 issue that is now on stands. For more stories like this, subscribe here!