About

A shop that started as a suitcase

The Nomad began in 2024 with forty-two objects carried back from Kyoto in hand luggage, and a spreadsheet of the people who made them. We buy small, we buy directly, and we do not restock anything we cannot stand behind twice.

2024
First suitcase
42
Objects in Drop 001
18
Countries since
4
People, total
Aditi Sahrawat
Founder · Gurugram
The founder

Aditi Sahrawat

Founder & Art Collector
I would rather sell twelve of something and mean it than four hundred and not.

Aditi Sahrawat trained as an industrial designer and spent six years in product development for a homeware manufacturer before deciding she was tired of designing things that were made three thousand at a time.

The Nomad started as a personal habit — bringing back one well-made object from every trip, then being asked where it came from often enough that it became a business. She still does the sourcing herself, workshop by workshop, and writes the passport card for every object we sell.

She lives in Gurugram, is on a plane roughly one week in four, and has a standing rule that nothing enters the shop unless she has watched it being made.

Based in
Gurugram, India
Background
Industrial design · NID
Sourcing trips
11 countries in 2026
Writes to you as
aditi@thenomad.in

How we work

Four rules, unchanged since Drop 001
Bought, not commissioned
We buy what makers already make. We do not ask them to change a colour so it sells better in India.
Paid in full, upfront
Every workshop is paid before the object ships. No consignment, no returns pushed back down the chain.
Small on purpose
Most objects arrive in batches of two to twenty. When they are gone we do not promise a second run.
Never discounted
The price is the price. Nothing in the shop has ever gone on sale, and nothing will.
Where we are
A studio in Gurugram, and a suitcase that is rarely unpacked.
Four of us pack every order by hand. If you write to us, one of the four writes back — usually Aditi, usually late.
Forty-two objects carried back from Kyoto. Drop 001 sells out in nine days.
2024
Marrakech and Seoul. The passport card is introduced after a customer asks who made her bowl.
2024
A studio in Gurugram replaces the spare room. Two people join.
2025
Istanbul, Lisbon, Porto. First year we turn down more workshops than we buy from.
2025
Eighteen countries, 1,940 objects rehomed, and still no sale.
2026