🇮🇳 POP MART IN INDIA
Where to Find Labubu, What’s Coming Next & Why Rohit Sharma Is Confused
⏰ THU Jun 12, 2025 @ 12 PM PST
🐟 Published from Seattle, WA
🔨 Built by Chase Burns Broderick
Late on 11 June 2025, Indian skipper Rohit Sharma posted an Instagram Story of seven jagged-toothed Labubu figures lined up on his table and captioned it: “My girls tried explaining these to me — I still don’t get it.” The “girls” were his wife Ritika Sajdeh and daughter Samaira, both avid collectors, and mainstream outlets—including Times of India, NDTV Lifestyle, Hindustan Times and Sportskeeda—screencapped the moment within hours, headlining his playful bafflement over the Pop Mart craze. In one cheeky swipe, the Hitman’s admission vaulted Labubu from niche collector fandom into India’s national conversation—even though Pop Mart still has no official store in the country, leaving fans to hunt through grey-market importers.
TL;DR - India Status (June 2025)
🇮🇳 Official flagship: None
🇮🇳 Official pop-ups/kiosks: None (watch for R City or Phoenix Palladium in Mumbai if Pop Mart repeats its mall pilot playbook)
🇮🇳 How Indians buy today: Grey-market importers & overseas proxies
When Cricket & Bollywood Meet Designer Toys
India’s Labubu moment is being amplified by one of the country’s biggest megaphones: Rohit Sharma. With ≈44 million Instagram followers, ≈24 million on X, and ≈14.6 million Facebook likes, the India-Today data firm Sprinklr flagged him as “the most-talked-about player” of the 2024 T20 World Cup, driving 70 million-plus social engagements in a single week. That outsized reach meant that anything he posted—whether a match-winning six or a plush toy—was destined to ricochet across Indian media.
So when Sharma uploaded an Instagram Story on 11 June 2025 showing seven pastel Labubu plushies and joked, “My girls tried explaining these to me, I still don’t get it,” lifestyle desks pounced: NDTV and other outlets ran the screenshot within hours, framing the cricketer’s bafflement as proof that Pop Mart’s fuzzy monster had vaulted from collector subculture to cricket-mad mainstream.
Bollywood soon piled on. In a wry Times of India column, actor-author Twinkle Khanna called Labubu “creepy-cute” and confessed to losing a bag-charm tug-of-war with her 11-year-old daughter, who scolded, “Mom, Labubu is a toy… it’s not OK for your age.” The piece—and husband Akshay Kumar’s quip that she should “focus on those creepy dolls”—turned the plush into a generational punch-line.
“4.30pm I come across Sydney Sweeney selling soap made from her bathwater. Better than the influencer who sold her farts for $1,000 and landed in the hospital after producing 97 jars by eating beans and boiled eggs. If Sydney wants her soaps to sell, she should harness the secret of Pop Mart’s success — the thrill of surprise. Labubus are sold in blind boxes, so you don’t know what you’re getting until you open it. It reminds me of that Gold Spot contest when we were kids. We had to collect bottle caps with ‘Jungle Book’ characters. I don’t even remember the prize. We were just chugging Gold Spot. The thrill of discovery trumps the actual reward. Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist who trained monkeys to recognise a light signal for a reward, concluded that the unpredictability of reward increases anticipation and dopamine. That keeps the monkey pressing the lever. Or the adult standing in line at 4am for a Labubu.” — Twinkle Khanna, Times of India
The numbers back the buzz. A June 4 Hindustan Times trend piece it ran from AP notes that TikTok’s #Labubu tag had already spawned 1.4 million posts worldwide. On the Indian front, reseller Nikhil Jain told The New Indian Express that orders were “blowing up” in every Tier-1 city, with Mumbai leading the pack among his daily buyers, matching what the platform’s Mumbai-heavy comment streams suggest.
Together, a cricketer’s shrug, a Bollywood star’s “creepy-cute” confession and a tsunami of short-form videos have vaulted Labubu from niche import to mainstream talking piece—before Pop Mart has even hung its first signboard in India.
Where to Score Pop Mart in India
(No Official Stores Yet)
📦 InaBox Store (online & Navi Mumbai pick-up) – Blind-box focus, ₹4,800-₹8,000 for Macaron series
📦 Kicks Machine (Pan-India shipping) – Sneaker-culture retailer listing Coca-Cola Labubu cases at ₹15,999