CaratLane Reports Second-Quarter Financial Results

The Company has adhered to the strictest safety protocols to keep everyone safe at our offices, manufacturing locations, logistics centres and stores and to give comfort to the consumers. Our strong customer focus has led to the continued improvement of our NPS scores.

The company saw a sharp rebound in business in Q2 once the government restrictions on store operations were gradually eased. Being the leading choice of consumers to buy jewellery online, the Company witnessed a sharp growth of 90% in online channel. The Company has 32 stores in malls where the footfall has been relatively lower. Same store growth in the high street stores was at 14% despite the impact of the restriction on store openings on certain days. Had it not been for the severe impact on the mall stores (the total operating days of stores was at 83% for the quarter), growth would have been even higher. The consumer sentiments have been gradually improving leading to better month-on-month recovery.

CaratLane has been at the forefront in providing convenience and choices to the customers and allowing consumers to buy their favourite designs from the stores as well as from the comfort of their homes. The Company introduced CaratLane Live that brings the expert advice of our jewellery consultants to our customers over a video call. Additionally, the customers see the chosen jewellery over the video call. This seamless experience of finding their favourite piece of jewellery helped a lot more customers to migrate to the online channel.

Online experience had been augmented a few years back with the Try-at-Home facility, allowing the customers to touch and feel their selected products before completing the transaction. Try-at-home channel also grew strongly by 47% and the Company has further rolled-out this facility to the consumers of three more cities (Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, and Nagpur) taking the total count of cities to 12. The company continues to strive to bring to the consumers their favourite products in the shortest possible time and rolled out a 24-hour delivery service in Delhi with plans to extend this to more cities in the coming months.

An increasing thrust of the Company on improving the online experience continued to increase its impact on retail transactions as well, with a majority of its retail transactions being online-influenced.

The Company continued to bring more benefits for its consumers. During the quarter, the company rolled out the CaratLane PoP! programme – a Plan of Purchase in which customers can set aside a fixed amount with the company every month and purchase jewellery on the plan maturity at the end of 6 months, along with getting an attractive top up on the plan maturity from the company. The scheme has witnessed a good initial response from its customers and the company sees this as a big opportunity for the future. The Company has replaced the physical certificates, for the products sold to consumers, by E-certificates making it easy for safekeeping by consumers.

The Company continued to bolster its product portfolio and added much more variety to the designs in the kids segment. Both the kids and the gifting segments have seen strong growth in the past quarter. ‘Shaya’, the silver jewellery brand that was launched by CaratLane last year, has seen a huge surge in demand, growing at 150% over the same quarter last year.

The Company is in a comfortable liquidity position due to adequate banking limits being in place and its ability to issue Commercial Papers at attractive rates. With a massive cost control exercise taken up in the first quarter, the company has seen a significant cost savings in Q2.

Mithun Sacheti, Founder and Managing Director of CaratLane commented, “Being the industry-leader in the online segment, CaratLane will continue to bring the best and seamless online buying experience to the Indian jewellery consumers. In the latest, we have brought the expertise of our jewellery consultants through CaratLane LIVE nationally and extended our Try-at-Home facility to the consumers of 3 more cities. CaratLane is the only national jewellery brand in India that grew in these challenging times, registering a double-digit growth while at the same time driving an intense cost optimisation programme. The immensely passionate and agile team of CaratLane has unparalleled focus on customer experience and on bringing beautiful, modern, and affordable designs to our customers. The launch of POP (Plan-of-Purchase) for the consumers will further increase the loyalty of our customers and is another important step in the aspiration of CaratLane of democratising jewellery and making it available for everyone, throughout the country.”

Courtesy: Retail Jeweller India New Service