Retail Jeweller India Forum 2024: Brands to focus on category expansion while being trend-friendly

The 10^th session of RJIF took place at JW Marriott, Sahar in Mumbai on January 3 and had speakers from the entire jewellery fraternity of India agreeing on the need to go digital and exclusive simultaneously

MUMBAI: It’s time to surpass the competition and make jewellery the luxury category, a moment that the Indian industry has been long deserving. With that vision and mission, the 10^th edition of Retail Jeweller India Forum 2024, with presenting partner Synergics and De Beers Forevermark and associate partners Achal Jewels, Fiona Diamonds, Nitin Jewellers, and Pragya Jewels took place at JW Marriott, Sahar in Mumbai on January 3, 2024.

The event commenced with the lamp-lighting ceremony by Samit Bhatta, associate publisher of Retail Jeweller Magazine, Vivek Das and Sanjiv Chatterjee, co-founders of Synergics Solutions, Amit Pratihari, Vice President of De Beers Forevermark, Richa Singh, MD (India and Middle East) Natural Diamonds Council, and Dev Shetty, Founder & CEO of FURA Gems.

Richa Singh, MD (India and Middle East)- NDC started the inaugural session of the day titled ‘Are we future ready? Decoding the real potential of natural diamonds’. Talking about understanding the psyche of young consumers, Richa stated that NDC’s website having 100 million views and about 600,000 readers for each article proves general interest in jewellery and diamonds as a category. “As a community, India’s jewellery industry has had the best festive buying season across the world. NC has done 845 collaborations and 750 pieces of content in 2023. We do PR on six retail brands who have collaborated with us,” she said.

Displaying the latest video collaboration with musician-actor Saba Azad, Singh maintained that the latest collaboration with NDC has over 18 lakh views on it. She also mentioned that with NDC actively collaborating with shows such as ‘Koffee with Karan’ on Disney+Hotstar and ‘The Wedding Planner’ on Prime Video, male celebrities such as Ranveer Singh are proudly flaunting their diamond jewellery, which is in itself a strong trend that Indian men are imbibing in their fashion senses.

The second session titled ‘Technology Transformation: Integrating technology deployment with change management for holistic tech adoption within the organization’ was presided over by Vivek Das, cofounder of Synergics Solutions, Kiran Shinde, CFO of PMJ Jewels and Gaurav Anand, MD of Anand Jewels.

Das talked about Synergics’ market across 7 countries with over 20,000 users and clientele comprising the likes of Caratlane, Candere, Angara e-commerce, Browns, and more. Touching upon the right product fit for any business, Das talked about Synergics’ top-of-the-line tech stack, vendor-wise contribution of profit, the best quality-driven vendor or subcontractor with minimal rejections and branch management with seamless customer ledgers.

“Sales and profit are lag indicators because they will never tell you where to make improvements in your organization. Lead indicators are design, pricing, procurement, outsourcing, and customer experience. Customer preferences have to be recorded for the brand to provide a standardized experience instead of relying on certain staff. Brands also have to monitor man hours to have more customer conversions. CRM can have a 40% increase in sales with generative AI,” Das maintained.

Das invited Kiran Shinde of PMJ Jewels to share the brand’s experience with tech upgradation, which began 8 years ago. “We had 8 offices then. Now, we have 32 offices across South India. The first concern back then was to get the right ERP and integrate it with the rest of the ecosystem if one wants to go omnichannel. The kind of data generated from ERP became important,” Shinde said.

Gaurav Anand of Anand Jewels talked about overhauling their back end at a crucial point when the company was planning to launch another brand while on its retail expansion spree. “The jewellery industry software we have been using are completely designed for business houses and not the customers. Synergics’ solutions allow me to position my brand for customers, as jewellery is one of my multiple businesses,” he maintained.

Moving over to the next session on ‘Future of Diamonds in the age of modern retail and digital’ by Amit Pratihari, Vice President- De Beers Forevermark, the spotlight went on the diverse cultural landscape of India. “Retailers need to befriend trends and play hard on content which is crucial today. The average age of India’s population is 29 years. Urbanization is happening and smart cities are being built up. E-commerce stands at $120 billion in 2023 and contributes to 12% of total retail. The cumulative value of diamond jewellery is at $70Bn now. Buyers seek brands for experiences, and responsibility, and are aligning with brands more than relying on the product category. They are graduating from being consumers to clients,” Pratihari maintained.

Rupak Sen, Chief Marketing Officer of FURA Gems, took over the next session titled ‘Discover the new profit centre for your showroom: Colour gemstones jewellery’. Touching upon minutes of the survey done across 10 Indian cities for 1000+ customers, Sen stated that there has been an 85% category awareness for rubies, 73% for emeralds, and 72% for sapphires. Sen talked about FURA Gems’ Celebration pink sapphires.

“For our upcoming valentine season, we are collaborating with 9 Indian jewellery manufacturers for our pink sapphires, crafting contemporary designs such as Jewelex and Midas, with affordability as an attraction point. Our ‘Pink is the new black’ campaign was launched in the Middle East with Jawhara. Fura will be spending 2 million US$ to promote celebration sapphires, starting with pink and continuing with green, teal, and blue sapphires,” Sen stated.  

Elaborating further, Dev Shetty, Founder & CEO, FURA Gems, talked about the American market’s fascination with green sapphires, which propelled the mining platform to kick off its assessment of the India market. “Fura’s rubies and sapphires are used by global luxury brands such as Dior. We set up an office in Mumbai and are starting a Fura training academy in Jaipur. Colour gemstones and diamonds can go together. We will amp up that excitement with green sapphires from Australia shortly.”

The highlight of the first half of RJIF 2024 was ‘Envisioning opportunities: Growing industry trends and new ideas for profitable change’, moderated by Soma Bhatta of Retail Jeweller India, joined by Darpan Anand of Punjab Jewels, Saumitra Saraf of Aisshpra Gems and Jewels, Mitesh Khimji, Khimji Jewellers; Dr C. Vinod Hayagriv of C. Krishniah Chetty Group of Jewellers; Vikas Kataria of DP Jewel Line, and Dev Shetty of FURA Gems. With India in a comparatively better position for future growth in terms of sheer population, the panel explored prospects of legacy brands leveraging trends to make them more profitable.

Darpan Anand talked about micro analysis of key verticals of his brand right from human resources to marketing to emerge as the highest profitable jeweller in his region. Elaborating on DP Jewel Line’s marvellous run for IPO and beyond, Vikas Kataria emphasized that India will have more than 10 smart cities to be built in future, which makes tier 3 and 4 cities with populations less than a lakh, new opportunities. Saumitra Saraf explained how being a gold-centric jeweller for 75 years has given a very filtered audience to Aisshpra. That changes as the brand plans to add 4-5 stores with even distribution across tier 2 and metro cities.

Mitesh Khimji said that Odisha was primarily a yellow gold market with the percentage of diamonds and coloured gemstones hardly at 1-2% of the total share. He cautioned against the excessive pursuit of market share, as one needs to steer away from the discount brand concept and focus on the bottom line, in order to achieve profitability.

Dr C. Vinod Hayagriv talked about cost accounting for jewellers in India to achieve a steady bottom line, especially in a market with customer age groups as diverse as 6 years and 60 years, not forgetting the simultaneous co-existence of mass and class consumers.

Listening to the concerns and challenges shared by fellow panellists, Dev Shetty explained how the operation of a colour gemstone mine across challenges such as the mining crises in 2016, and the pandemic in 2020 helped the brand tide over any financial upset. “Consistent supply of colour gemstones will help retailers stabilise the bottom line. For that to happen, I request jewellers not to add colour gemstones for making charges, but to sell it as separate products,” Shetty observed.

The first half of RJIF 2024 concluded with retailers agreeing on rising premiumisation. “There is a niche set of customers that every jeweller deals with and they look for exclusivity. With colour gemstones, it becomes a haven for designers to create the design language they want to, while handsome margins improve the balance sheet for jewellers as well,” Soma Bhatta maintained.

Written by Ashwin Bose

Retail Jeweller India Exclusive