What India’s sexual wellness boom reveals about desire, communication and modern relationships

My colleague was just trying to buy keerai — Tamil for spinach — when Instamart suggested a men’s stroker instead. It appeared between milk and eggs, with the assurance of something that had always belonged there. She was not offended, just mildly impressed by the confidence. “I was genuinely looking for greens,” she said later. “But apparently, the algorithm thought I needed emotional nourishment of another kind.”

When I mentioned this to a friend over drinks, she nodded, unsurprised. “That tracks,” she said. “Sex stuff has become very practical.” It was not framed as a confession or a breakthrough, just useful information, shared the way people now talk about finding a better mattress or switching to oat milk.

Sexual wellness, at least in urban India, has quietly exited the realm of taboo and entered the world of logistics. It is no longer about rebellion or secrecy; it is about optimisation. Something you discuss calmly, test thoughtfully, and occasionally reorder. An errand, really. One that can sit comfortably alongside spinach.

A few days later, another friend sent me a reel she would never post herself — a sexual-wellness educator unveiling a multicoloured dildo with the solemnity of a tech launch. It bent, flexed, suctioned itself onto surfaces, and appeared to promise stamina, adaptability, and zero emotional baggage.

“I’m ready to invest,” my friend captioned it. “I’m tired of explaining.”

Since launching her sexual wellness brand Leezu’s in 2023, educator Leeza Mangaldas tells me they have sold over 250,000 units across categories. “The numbers are revealing. About 60% of Leezu’s customers are men and 40% are women. While many buy toys for themselves, women’s toys are often picked up by men, frequently as gifts for wives and girlfriends,” she says.

And despite the long-held belief that these toys are a singles-only affair, a large chunk of Leezu’s customers are actually couples, using toys not as a substitute, but as an upgrade.

A married friend had a gentler take. “Toys saved us,” she told me one afternoon, stirring her coffee like it might offer clarity. “Talking about sex nearly broke us.” For her, the object was not a replacement but a bridge — a way to experience pleasure without excavating years of silence all at once.

These conversations are no longer fringe. People trade product links, forward reels, and discuss lubricants with the discernment once reserved for restaurant recommendations. The market numbers reflect this cultural easing, but the more interesting shift is subtler: sex has become discussable, while intimacy still requires actual effort.

A sexuality coach once put it bluntly. “People come in with devices,” she said, “but no language.” Many know exactly what they have bought, but not how to ask for what they want without feeling exposed. Pleasure, it turns out, is easier to purchase than to articulate.

Which brings the question back to the bedroom. With all this access and openness, are we becoming better lovers or just better equipped, carrying the same old awkwardness, ego, and emotional buffering into bed?

Not all the answers come from women. A male friend, in a long-term relationship, told me he has had to actively retrain himself. “I’ve conditioned myself,” he said carefully. “My girlfriend helped.”

Still, not everyone has arrived here. “I don’t always want to manage someone else’s feelings,” one friend said. Another described foreplay that feels like a performance she’s expected to applaud, regardless of whether it’s working for her. These aren’t failures of technique so much as failures of attention.

Underneath it all

The politics of the bedroom rarely lie in positions. They surface in who initiates and who listens, who assumes and who checks, who believes effort alone should be rewarded. Even as sexual wellness becomes more normalised, many of us are still negotiating inherited silence, performance anxiety, and the great Indian discomfort with direct conversations about anything that matters. We read about tantra but dodge emotional truth. We book workshops on intimacy without quite practising it.

And yet, something is shifting. I hear about couples laughing mid-experiment instead of spiralling into insecurity. About men treating vibrators as collaborators rather than competition. About women saying, “That’s not doing anything for me,” without apologising. A queer friend once summed it up neatly: “Straight people treat sex like a presentation. We treat it like a discussion. Assumptions don’t survive when nothing is default.”

There is a softer energy entering the bedroom — a willingness to learn instead of perform, to ask instead of assume. The old ghosts have not vanished entirely. The fear of judgment lingers, as does the belief that pleasure is indulgent rather than necessary. But those ideas feel less immovable than they once did.

So are we becoming better lovers? Possibly — unevenly, and at different speeds. The toys, the workshops, the guides are not solutions. They are permission slips. Signals that pleasure is not shameful, that intimacy can be learned, and that communication is not unsexy.

My colleague did eventually get her spinach. She did not comment further on the stroker. The algorithm had already said enough.

Published – January 30, 2026 03:00 pm IST