Iris Galerie, the Paris-based experiential art-gallery brand that photographs and enlarges a customer’s iris into a framed artwork, has entered India through a master franchise partnership with FranGlobal, the international business arm of Franchise India. The brand already runs more than 200 galleries across 20 countries and has served over one million guests — and India is explicitly positioned as a step inside a wider Asia expansion that also has Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo and Seoul in view.
Iris Galerie was founded by Paul-Antoine Briat in collaboration with the French photographer Francis Giacobetti, and operates a gallery at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. The proposition sits at the intersection of photography, art, gifting, décor and personal expression: the customer is not buying a product off a shelf but commissioning a one-off image of their own eye. The brand’s stated ethos is to “immortalise” the iris.
That distinction matters commercially. A concept whose inventory is created on-site and on-demand carries no stock risk and no seasonal markdown cycle — an operating profile closer to a service business than to conventional specialty retail.
Gaurav Marya, Chairman of Franchise India Group, placed the India move inside the brand’s broader Asian strategy, pointing to rising consumer demand for personalised experiences, premium gifting and experiential retail.
“Its entry into India is an important step in the brand’s wider Asian expansion strategy.”
For a European concept with 200 galleries but no prior South Asian footprint, routing entry through an established local franchise organisation compresses the site-selection, mall-relationship and partner-vetting timeline considerably. It is the same logic behind most successful master franchise and area development structures across the region.
Beyond the framed iris print, the brand has built a jewellery line that extends average transaction value. The Secret Eye collection draws on the 18th-century tradition of eye miniatures — the future George IV is believed to have sent a miniature eye portrait in jewellery form to his future wife as a token of affection, a gesture credited with popularising eye motifs in jewellery. Iris Galerie translates the customer’s own iris image into that format, alongside collections named Bloom and Holy.
A gallery that can convert one photography session into a print, a frame and a jewellery piece has a materially different revenue profile from one selling a single souvenir.
The India entry lands in a market where consumers are visibly shifting toward customised products, meaningful gifting and shareable in-store moments. That is the same demand pattern pulling experience-led formats into prime centres across Asia Pacific and MENA, a trend we examined in our analysis of why malls now buy experiences rather than tenants.
Landlords have a straightforward reason to court these concepts: they generate dwell time, photography and organic social distribution that a conventional apparel unit does not. A gallery where the transaction itself is the content is close to an ideal anchor for a mall trying to justify footfall.
The forward pipeline is the part worth watching. Iris Galerie is evaluating Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo and Seoul, and is assessing prospective franchise partnerships for larger South Asian markets. For multi-unit operators and family offices in those cities, a brand at 200 units with a proven European flagship and an announced Asian intent is at the stage where territory conversations are live rather than hypothetical.
The operator profile is also unusual. This is not a food licence requiring commissary infrastructure or a fitness brand requiring 3,000 square feet and heavy plant. It suits investors who can secure premium mall positions and run a small, well-trained team — a footprint closer to a jewellery counter than a restaurant. Investors comparing that against food-led options can weigh it beside our overview of India entry routes and legal structures and the broader non-food franchise opportunities now competing for the same capital.
The strategic read: European experiential concepts are treating Asia as a single expansion sequence rather than a series of one-off licences, and the partners who move early in a brand’s regional rollout typically secure the territories with the deepest mall inventory.
