Tara Jewels turns its focus on domestic mkt

Tara Jewels Export Ltd, a DTC siteholder and a Rs 75 crore diamond jewellery manufacturer, is offering natural diamond jewellery using 18ct gold at upto 40 per cent lower than the market price with guarantee certification from Diamond & Gem Laboratory of America (DGLA).

Targetting the young generation middle class men and women, the company is luring customers with cheaper jewellery items with the lowest price pendent available at as low as Rs 1,200 under the renowned brand name of "Tara".

The company offers 90 per cent buyback as against the industry trend of 85 per cent. The need for strengthening domestic presence was felt because of people's ethnic attraction towards jewellery items especially gold, of which India is the largest importer (about 850 tonnes).

"Our strategy is to save money on brand promotion by not hiring any celebrity for endorsement. Apart from that we don't focus on opening jewellery shop in a costly area like Nariman Point and Worli so that the maintenance would not cost us more and thereby, the pricing of jewellery would be lower. We share savings from all these options with our customer by offering jewellery at cheaper price," said Brig. A P Deo, director of Tara Jewels Export Ltd.

Tara as an export oriented company has been successfully catering to low, medium and high-end products in the export markets mainly in the US through existing marketing network.

The company sees good opportunity of jewellery sales in India where disposable income of average middle class is growing along with booming gross domestic products (GDP). Last year, the company clocked jewellery sale worth Rs 1.5-2 crore in the domestic market which it estimates to grow upto Rs 5 crore this year due to consumers' attraction towards diamond.

"Indian consumers are a bit apprehensive towards diamond mainly because of higher price, unknown source (a fear of blood diamond), suspicion on originality and lack of heart winning guarantee. If we address all these issues, the domestic demand would boost leaps and bounds," said the brigadier.

The $2 billion, Indian diamond jewellery sector is presently growing at 9 per cent as against the actual potential of 25 per cent. Whereas, the Chinese demand is growing at 25 per cent and US at 3 per cent.

Talking about potential of diamond sale in India, he said that 99 per cent diamond available in the world is cut and polished in India. But, India's share in world jewellery market is negligible at hardly 2 per cent.

Now, the government should immediately impose restriction on the exports of cut and polished diamond and instead it should promote exports of finished jewellery which is not only margin oriented but also employment-friendly.

Tara is also setting up a cutting and polishing unit at Navasri in Gujarat at a cost of Rs 3 crore which is likely to become fully operational by the end of next month.