Aryan Khan talks D’YAVOL’s vodka, his upcoming directorial debut, and what his favourite Shah Rukh Khan movie is

Aryan Khan is the co-founder of D’YAVOL
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement

Aryan Khan is busy. The 27-year-old is the co-founder of his streetwear and spirits brand D’YAVOL, and is working on his directorial debut — a web series slated to release soon.  Along with all of this, he carries the weight of being the son of arguably the most famous actor in the world, Shah Rukh Khan.

But the scion of Bollywood royalty is serious about business, “Over the last couple of years, I have been juggling many roles, and that comes with its own challenges and hurdles. Even so, I try to make sure that I’m dedicating myself to each project in equal measure,” he says. I catch up with him about the spirits vertical of D’YAVOL, along with the co-founder of the brand Leti Blagoeva. 

D’YAVOL was started by Aryan, Shah Rukh, and their family friends Leti Blagoeva and Bunty Singh. The brand has both a streetwear vertical (called X) and also a portfolio of spirits. While the streetwear is making a lot of noise with international launches, the spirits vertical too is quietly making its mark in the industry. The brand has a single estate vodka, a blended malt Scotch whisky (Inception), and blended scotch whisky (Vortex) in its portfolio. 

(L-R) Leti Blagoeva, Bunty Singh and Aryan Khan
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

D’YAVOL began with Europe-based husband-wife duo Bunty and Leti deciding to create a company with the Khans. Leti says, “The business partnership evolved out of an existing friendship. Bunty and Shah Rukh have been family friends for more than 10 or 12 years now. Whenever we would meet we would talk about luxury and brands. One day, very organically, we decided to put our ideas to reality.”

Leti had a background of management consultancy in Germany, and was an entrepreneur in the IT space. After their business was divested, D’YAVOL was birthed. She says that working with such big names has its own challenges (“We can be in far flung places like a tiny village in the Netherlands, or in the middle of Alabama, but a crowd will gather within minutes if Shah Rukh is there”). But there is a lot of commitment from the Khans, and Leti shares how very often the team spends hours together chalking out new ideas.

The SilkRoad Martini created in collaboration with the Hutong bar in London 

The ‘born-in-origin’ philosophy

The product side of the brand is handled by Bunty and Leti, while Shah Rukh and Aryan take the lead on the creative and visual aesthetic side. “For us, the first rule of thumb is to always go straight to the authentic source, where we have painstakingly worked with local experts to blend age-old techniques with a modern twist,” Aryan says, talking about the brand’s ‘born-in-origin’ philosophy.

He adds, “It is about assigning the rightful value to provenance and craft.” The vodka, for instance, is made in the heart of Poland, the country where vodka was first made. The grains are sourced from a single field in an estate, located in the region of Kalisz. The spirit is filtered using black pearls from French Polynesia. Even the whiskies are all made in Scotland, to maintain the authenticity.