The initiative combines old gold exchange, lower-karat jewellery promotion, community engagement and policy advocacy to bring about more sustainable gold ownership patterns
Pune: PNG Jewellers has announced ‘Swarna Swaraj’, an initiative to mobilize India’s vast dormant household gold, reduce the country’s dependence on gold imports, and encourage more responsible patterns of gold ownership and consumption across the country.
The initiative is PNG Jewellers’ direct and voluntary response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to all Indians to exercise restraint in gold purchases.
Swarna Swaraj draws on 194 years of PNG Jewellers’ relationship with customers – through the Great Depression, two World Wars, the freedom struggle, Partition, and a global pandemic – a generational community, built across centuries.
India is estimated to hold over 25,000 tonnes of privately owned gold, much of it lying dormant in bank lockers, family vaults, and inherited collections. This gold has not lost value, but simply stopped moving. Swarna Swaraj is an invitation to let it move again, for the family, and for the nation.
Commenting on the campaign, Saurabh Gadgil, Chairman and Managing Director, PNG Jewellers said, “When our Prime Minister calls on the nation, we do not respond as a retailer. We respond as an institution. For 194 years, this brand has been a guest in the homes of Indian families, present at their weddings, their celebrations, their milestones. Today, we ask that trust to work in a larger direction. India’s gold should circulate within India. That is the simplest and most powerful thing we can do together.”
The six commitments of Swarna Swaraj are:
- Old Gold Exchange – Bring it in. Let it live again.
PNG Jewellers will open dedicated Gold Recirculation Counters across all its showrooms and franchise outlets nationwide. Customers have been invited to bring in old, unused, broken or inherited jewellery pieces that have been sitting in lockers, to be assessed with full transparency, on the spot. Gold recirculated through this programme will be refined and reintroduced into the domestic jewellery ecosystem, reducing the need for freshly imported gold.
- Encouraging Shift to Lower-Karat Gold for Bridal and Festive Shopping
India’s love for 22Kt gold is cultural and generational, but the economic reality of gold’s role in India’s import bill asks for a gradual, voluntary shift. As 18Kt gold requires significantly less pure gold per piece while enabling craftsmanship of equal quality and beauty, PNG Jewellers will actively expand and promote its 18Kt collections, making the case through design, education and honest conversation with its customers.
- Lightweight and Everyday Jewellery in 14Kt and 9Kt for Litestyle by PNG
For a country that wears gold as much as it saves it, the greatest opportunity for import reduction lies in daily wear. Jewellery in 14Kt and 9Kt uses a fraction of the gold required for traditional 22Kt pieces, while lending itself naturally to the kind of lightweight, wearable design that younger Indian consumers are increasingly drawn to. Litestyle by PNG will expand its collections in these formats.
- Community Conversations
PNG Jewellers’ most enduring asset is the trust it holds within communities that have purchased from PNG across two, three, sometimes four generations. Swarna Swaraj will mobilize that trust through grass roots conversations in partnership with cooperative housing societies, Ganesh mandals, mahila mandals, and women’s self-help groups across Maharashtra and beyond.
- Responsible Consumption as a Long-Term Cultural Shift
Swarna Swaraj is not a campaign with a start and end date. It is PNG Jewellers’ public commitment to a long-term shift in how gold is owned, used, and valued in India. The brand will use every customer touchpoint, in-store, online, and through its community networks, to build a more informed, more responsible culture around gold.
- Industry Advocacy
As one of India’s oldest jewellery institutions, PNG Jewellers recognizes that the structural changes India’s gold economy needs cannot be driven by brand initiatives alone. The brand will commit to actively engaging with industry bodies and policy-makers to advocate reforms that make domestic gold recirculation more efficient, more rewarding for consumers, and less vulnerable to the grey market pressures that sharp import duty increases risk creating.
PNG Jewellers’ journey as a brand has a legacy dating back to 1832. The brand now operates 67+ retail stores in India.
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