CaratLane promotes Avnish Anand to Chief Executive Officer

The development took place soon after co-founder Mithun Sacheti exited the company and his 27.18% stake in the brand was picked up by Titan for Rs. 4,621 crore

Avnish Anand, co-founder and COO, CaratLane, has been promoted to the ecommerce startup’s CEO with immediate effect, days after his former boss and co-founder Mithun Sacheti exited CaratLane, selling his shares to Tata Group’s watchmaking giant Titan.

Sacheti and his family held a 27.18% stake in the startup, which was picked up by Titan for Rs. 4,621 crore, valuing CaratLane at Rs. 17,000 crore (around $2 billion). Titan now holds a 98.28% stake in CaratLane.

As per the company, Titan will finance the deal through a combination of cash balances, internal accruals and debt. The deal is still subject to regulatory approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and other closing conditions.

The deal is expected to be completed by October 31, pursuant to all approvals.

Former CaratLane CEO Sacheti’s exit was also one of the largest ecommerce exits in India, second only to the Walmart-Flipkart deal, which saw the two co-founders, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, get more than $1 billion each for their stake in the ecommerce giant.

The startup also added that co-founder Gurukeerthi Gurunathan will continue to be the chief technology officer (CTO) of CaratLane.

“Mithun has been a pillar of support and a sounding board for all my ideas these past years, so of course it’s sad to see him go. But I’m really excited for this new chapter as we have a great opportunity to build a bigger and more remarkable business in front of us,” CaratLane’s new CEO, Anand, said in a statement.

Incidentally, the remaining 1.72% of the stake in the startup is locked up in ESOPs for 75 of its 400 corporate employees. Given that Titan will be acquiring the remaining stake in CaratLane as well, these employees are set to receive Rs. 340-380 crore as a result.

Founded in 2008 by Mithun Sacheti and Srinivasa Gopalan, CaratLane is an omnichannel brand that manufactures and sells jewellery items in India and the US. The startup competes with other homegrown startups in the jewellery space such as GIVA, BlueStone and Melorra.

The D2C brand has logged healthy growth metrics in the past three years, growing its total income from Rs. 723 crore in the financial year 2020-2021 (FY21) to Rs. 1,267 crore in FY22. In 2023, its total income rose more than 71% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs. 2,177 crore in FY23.

Courtesy: inc42.com