Apple Borivali opens in Mumbai: What a suburban store means for the city’s Apple users

For three years, if you lived in Mumbai’s western suburbs and needed anything from an Apple Store, you had one option. Drive to Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), find parking, spend half your day, and drive back, all for a battery replacement or a pair of AirPods you could have ordered online but wanted to try first.

Now, for enthusiasts who live in the upper reaches of Mumbai, Apple Borivali, nestled inside Sky City Mall, will cut their commute time in half. Opened on February 26, it is now Apple’s second store in Mumbai and the sixth across India, including Apple Saket in Delhi, and stores in Bengaluru, Pune, and Noida

“Since I stay in Kandivali, visiting the Apple BKC store was a trip by itself,” says Dhaivant Shah, a chartered accountant. “Here in the western suburbs, we’d have to stick to Apple authorized resellers or larger electronics chains for our purchases. Having an Apple Store nearby makes it more convenient, as they have the entire product portfolio available, and you can pick up online purchases too.” That matters more than it sounds. Apple Pickup, which lets customers order online and collect in store, turns a retail location into a logistics node. For someone working in Malad or living in Kandivali, being able to grab an online order from Borivali on the way home is a fundamentally different proposition than scheduling a BKC visit around it.

Rohit Menon, a senior engineering manager who works out of Mindspace Business Park in Malad, has felt the friction firsthand. “BKC is easily an hour and a half each way for me on a good day. Borivali is 15 minutes from my office. I’d actually go now, not just when I absolutely have to.”

Beyond the purchase

Apple Borivali
| Photo Credit:
Apple

Apple Stores have always been designed to do more than sell products. The Borivali store follows that template. It has over 70 team members, a Genius Bar for repairs and support, a dedicated Business Team for organisations, and runs daily Today at Apple sessions covering photography, coding, music, and more. The full product lineup is on display, including the iPhone 17 family, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3, and the M5-powered Mac and iPad range.

Whether a suburban location can replicate the draw of a flagship like BKC is the obvious next question.

Swati Mukund, an educator, research scholar, and influencer, thinks it has less to do with the address and more with what the store actually offers. “The Borivali store will offer the same quality of support, knowledgeable staff, and Today at Apple programming.”

Rohit’s reasons are closer to home. “I have a MacBook Air, an iPhone, and my brother has an older iPad that’s been needing a battery replacement for months. We keep putting it off because going all the way to BKC can be exhausting. Having a store in Borivali means I can drop in after work, maybe do a trade-in for my brother’s iPad while I’m at it. My parents are also in Kandivali, and they’re always asking me to help with their iPhones. Now I can just tell them to walk into the store themselves.”

And while six stores in three years is progress, whether it is fast enough remains an open debate.

Dhaivant is blunt about it. “For a city the size of Mumbai, having just two stores to serve such a large population is a bit of a downer. Apple certainly needs more stores, preferably in South Bombay, Navi Mumbai, and Thane. Even at the India level, six stores are underwhelming. This should have been 60, or even over 100, by now. The US has more than 250 Apple Stores.”

Swati has a more measured view. “Apple seems to be expanding with intent rather than speed alone. Demand in India, especially in large metros, is growing quickly, and physical stores play an important role in education, trust, and long-term usage. I’m certain a lot more cities are in the pipeline.”

What the store solves

Apple Borivali launch day
| Photo Credit:
Aamir Siddiqui

What Apple Borivali offers, beyond the branding and the curated Mumbai playlists, is something unglamorous but useful. It shortens the distance between a problem and a solution. Cracked screens, sluggish batteries, trade-ins you keep postponing, a parent who needs someone to walk them through their settings. All of it piles up when the nearest store is an hour and a half away.

“It mainly adds convenience without urgency,” Swati says. “It reduces the need to plan every visit far in advance and encourages people to engage more regularly with their devices and the ecosystem.”

Apple Borivali is located at Sky City Mall, Borivali, Mumbai.

Published – February 27, 2026 02:03 pm IST