#RJIF2024: Service providers highlight user pain-points, devise flexible route to customer delight

The panelists – Raj Parakh of Plus; Sankalp Goyal of Book My Diamond; Rohit Hudke of Rings & I and Abhijeet Lalgondar of SalesWizz – agreed on finding a middle ground between standarized sales practices of top chain store brands and personalization of boutique brands, during an insightful session moderated by Deepak Tulsian of Mywisdomlane.com

Mumbai: A lot goes into the enriching customer experience that a consumer gets at any given retail jewellery showroom. On the one hand, it is the generations-long expertise of family jewellers. On the other hand, it is the intuitive approach via technology that studies the pulse of the consumer even before walking in. The session ‘Retail service providers: Exploring new services and technology’ at the Retail Jeweller India Forum 2024, held in Mumbai on January 3, decoded the purpose and journeys of tech brands that provide such services to jewellery retailers.

Moderated by Deepak Tulsian, jewellery e-commerce consultant and Founder of Mywisdomlane.com, the panel had Raj Parakh, Founder, Plus; Sankalp Goyal, CEO & Founder, Book My Diamond; Rohit Hudke, Founder, Rings & I and Abhijeet Lalgondar, Head – Sales and Marketing of SalesWizz as participants. 

Finding the sweet spot in delighting the know-it-all customers of today, the session began with Goyal’s purpose of building interactions between a jeweller or a salesperson with a solitaire customer and how to double down the brand’s topline every quarter or six months. Parakh related how his platform, Plus, brings young consumers to stores by saving as per their convenience on the app for future jewellery purchase. “We list only verified partners on our platform for the customer to go ahead and purchase,” Parakh said. 

Hudke’s Rings & I is creating an AI-driven, future-ready, jewellery retail tech platform for Gen Z and Gen Y in India, while Lalgondar’s app called SalesWizz is a single platform managing all transactions required to run a business, be it sharing a product detail online, making a sales, supply or customer database.

Technology, besides enabling retailers to improve bottomline and topline, also empowers staff and customers to interact and get optimum value from the brand with lesser engagement. On that note, Goyal talked about nurturing the first impulse for buying solitaires on the platform. “If a customer gets all info about the diamond they will buy, it creates trust. Our app makes solitaires worth Rs 6,000 crore ready to deliver. This improves sales efficiency,” he said.

After surveying almost 10,000 women across years, Parakh’s idea of a fintech brand transitioned into Plus to satiate the strong investment needs of women in general. “Young customers were not happy with the lock-in period of various jewellery schemes and demanded some sort of return in the event of withdrawing the money invested. Our NBFC-based, RBI affiliated processes ensure gold investment powered by Augmont. We’ve seen conversions increase with add-on services by jewellers, and so we also built apps for big brands such as ORRA,” Parakh said.

Talking about transparency, Parakh said that all transactions get registered in-app and the existing 7,000-strong user base is notified of any auto-debit a few days in advance. “We have a dashboard for every jeweller with WhatsApp, e-mail integrations that lessen the number of manual calls to be made. Every step is explained lucidly for the users,” he added. 

Hudke said that ‘Rings & I’ has its inventory with 20% real jewellery, 60% sample line, and 20% virtual footprint, in order to satisfy a diverse customer base. Their made-to-order sample line has a 70% conversion rate, while 60% of inventory is for in-store purchase, and the rest, online for impulse purchase, he added. The brand is also making a ‘Build Your Own Jewellery’ model through AI and has started with diamond rings. “We plan to open two more brands in bangles and bracelets, and one for earrings and pendants,” Hudke said. 

SalesWizz supports legacy family jewellers in retaining their loyal customer base with a digital presence first and a catalogue built on-the-go, said Lalgondar. 

Talking about onboarding jewellers, Goyal said that Book My Diamond has more than 1,600 active jewellers on the platform. Among other points made by the panelists were that Plus has a verification ratio of 35%, while ‘Rings & I’ offers nine different prices for each SKU. 

The panelists agreed on finding a middle ground between standardized sales practices of top chain store brands, which focus on scalability, and personalization as intense as that of boutique brands. Through simplified technology, the service providers assured retail jewellers of better consumer engagement.

Written by Ashwin Bose

Retail Jeweller India Exclusive