India’s luxury sales are expected to expand by a scorching 20 percent annually until 2015, as brand-smitten consumers snap up big names to flaunt their wealth.

Luxury sales were slow to take off in India a decade ago, disappointing retailers who had rushed into what they hoped would be the next China — a vast market of over a billion people with an eye for status symbols.

But now Indian consumers “are quickly catching up with global trends”, according to Neelesh Hundekari, author of the recent “Indian Luxury Review” report.

The luxury sector is set to post double-digit growth this year to 191 billion euros driven by the appetite of Chinese consumers for top-quality goods, according to a study by Bain & Company released on Monday.

While “the global economic situation is difficult” the luxury sector “is in good health and is growing above all in Asian markets,” said Santo Versace, head of the Italian fashion house and the Altagamma Foundation of Italian luxury companies.

The growth forecast was revised up to 10 percent from 8 percent, but still falls short of the 13-percent growth the sector recorded last year.

L2, a company that conducts research on digital business innovation, has released a study on the most web-savvy designers.

Burberry, which this week reported a 30-percent revenue rise for the first half of the financial year mainly due to a boom in the Chinese market, came out on top — “proof that digital investments translate to shareholder value,” according to L2.

Judging from its analysis, it is safe to say that those brands that connected the dots between social media and e-commerce fared best in the ranking.

While designers are trying to target Western customers with affordable fashion chain collaborations or diffusion lines, their haute couture branches are almost single-handedly being kept alive by clients in the wealthy Gulf countries.

“I want to be different from others,” a buyer explains. “What I want is unique pieces, extravagant and chic. I do not want to pay 6,000 euros for a dress, as it happened to me with a Pucci outfit recently, and see it on somebody else the same evening.”

Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon hopes to open up to 50 stores in China over the next five years in what she dubbed an “exciting” market for high-end goods.

China is the world’s fastest-growing market for luxury products and an ongoing economic boom is creating new billionaires every year in a huge explosion in wealth.

Jimmy Choo currently has just two shops in China — one in Beijing and another in Shanghai. A third will open at the end of the year in the eastern city of Nanjing.

Thousands of rich Shanghai residents have turned China’s most cosmopolitan city into the luxury capital of a country that is expected to become the world’s largest market for the sector between 2012 and 2015.

Shanghai topped China’s luxury market in 2010-11 with 18% of overall sales, ahead of Beijing’s 16% and the eastern city of Hangzhou, with its 13% share.

Second and third-tier cities in the country are still far behind, despite boasting a growing number of wealthy people, according to the World Luxury Association.