ELLE Digital Cover Star: Diipa Büller-Khosla, Born Indie, Raised Wild

Mornings in Worli carry that sharp, salt-and-diesel air that makes you feel like the city has already run a lap before you’ve had water. The shoot was scheduled for 9.30 a.m., and Diipa Büller-Khosla walked in at 9.35 a.m. — which, on a Mumbai set, counts as both a small miracle and a private kindness to a team still coaxing the set into place.

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The studio held that familiar pre-shoot heat: racks crowding the walkway, garment bags exhaling plastic, assistants moving with the alertness of people who can name every missing pin before the stylist even realises it’s gone. Büller-Khosla was efficient in the unshowy way that makes everyone else sharper. She kept things moving, held a pose without overworking it, and seemed to know instinctively which frames deserved patience and which simply needed to be done cleanly and sent on their way.

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Somewhere between looks, music threaded through the studio, as it always does. Saint Levant drifted in and out; Tyla followed. The choice carried a quiet wink — Büller-Khosla had recently watched a Tyla night in Mumbai ripple across the internet, where a glossy, baddie-bright reel and a swipe of her brand’s lip balm travelled faster than most press releases ever could. Hearing Tyla now felt less like a coincidence and more like a woman enjoying the afterglow of a moment that found its people.

By the time I speak to her later, the portrait has already begun to take shape. A founder, yes — but also a translator, someone who has spent years moving between worlds and learning which parts of herself refuse translation. It is easy to reduce her to a headline: a global creator turned beauty entrepreneur, her brand shorthand for elevated Indianness. The more compelling question is why she began — and why her work keeps returning to the same emotional centre.

She answers by naming a feeling familiar to many global desi women: the tenderness of loving a culture that raised you, and the impatience of wanting the autonomy it doesn’t always know how to accommodate. “I feel like this friction point is something that all of us in the global desi community feel,” she says. “For me, it’s been very intense as I’ve grown into myself — but it’s never really gone away.”

In her telling, it shows up in ordinary places: family intimacy and ambition, belonging and breathlessness. “On the one hand, you feel very Indian, very desi — your grandmother, your mother, all the traditions that come with that,” she says. “But at the same time when you’ve either gone abroad to study or even just look at modern ways of life, there is this constant friction between respecting the culture you grew up with and being a global citizen.” 

Her brand, Indēwild, is built on that same duality. “Everything we do is a combination of respecting our culture and tradition,” she says, “while also being modern women who can take on the world.” But she doesn’t leave it at a neat founder line. The brand’s decisions, she explains, aren’t the private preferences of one woman with good taste and better lighting. They’re debated, tested, shaped by a community. “It’s not just me,” she says. “We build it with thousands of women who tell us what they actually want.”

Indian womanhood, as she describes it, resists neat categorisation — and a single face. “We have everyone from Kashmir to Kanyakumari — every skin shade, every lip shade, every eye shade,” she says. You can hear the founder’s mind at work, turning emotion into infrastructure designed to hold real people.

When I ask what she would want her daughter to do differently, she answers like someone who has outgrown the idea of being inspirational. She’s less interested in being mirrored than multiplied. “I would hope she builds something that helps millions of businesswomen in India,” she says. The vision is practical, almost stubborn: a fund that backs women early, before press validation, before institutional approval. “Whether it’s a grandmother trying to build a pickle company or a woman taking on the tech world.” 

Her recent relocation has sharpened that focus. Büller-Khosla moved from Amsterdam to Mumbai for work, and she describes the contrast with fond precision. Amsterdam felt like “a village in a city,” calibrated for balance. Mumbai keeps her alert. “I really wanted a challenge,” she says. “I’m more on my toes. There’s more action and movement. No day looks the same.” When she needs to reset, she returns “once or twice a year” to Amsterdam “to stare at the stars and chill” — then comes back re-energised.

It would be easy to end on a clean moral. Büller-Khosla resists that. Her story is built from holding multiple truths without flinching. The girl raised inside fairness logic became a woman who travelled far enough to see its absurdity — and then came back determined to build something more honest for the next set of mirrors.

Team Credits:

Editorial Director: Ainee Nizami Ahmedi; Videographer: Anurag George Ekka; Fashion Editor: Shaeroy Chinoy; Stylist: Idris Nidham; Jr. Graphic Designer: Aditi Magesh; Makeup: Claire Gill; Hair: Rakshanda Irani; Bookings Editor: Rishith Shetty; Assisted By: Hardika Singh (styling), Tapasya Sawant (bookings); Artist Reputation management: Sharan M