Consumer buying patterns in India's jewellery market are shifting towards non-wedding purchases, a segment that has remained largely overlooked by the industry, said Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), BlueStone Jewellery and Lifestyle. Kushwaha said the company has deliberately focused on the non-wedding category.
In an interview with BW Businessworld, he noted that the non-wedding segment now accounts for nearly half of India's jewellery demand, compared with 80 to 90 per cent of the market being driven by weddings two to three decades ago.
“Almost 100 per cent of our business is in the non-wedding segment and that segment is going much faster. That is essentially where the market and the consumers are moving. We have focused more on the non-wedding segment, which we believe has largely been ignored by all the players for a very, very long time,” Kushwaha explained.
The Founder also said jewellery continues to dominate India's luxury spending, with 80 to 85 per cent of affluent consumers' discretionary luxury purchases going towards jewellery as Indians "fundamentally believe in gold" over other luxury goods. He added that younger buyers are increasingly moving towards organised jewellers as they relocate across cities rather than remaining loyal to traditional local retailers.
Generational Shift Driving Organised Jewellery Retail
Kushwaha said the migration towards organised jewellery retail is being driven more by a generational shift than by regulatory changes alone. Calling jewellery “fundamentally a very loyal category,” he said consumers traditionally purchased from the same local jeweller for decades.
He said increasing migration across cities is changing that pattern, with younger consumers increasingly buying from organised jewellers instead of continuing with traditional local jewellers. "As people, generations move, the newer generations are actually moving more and more towards organised jewellers from unorganised. That is what is actually fuelling this shift," Kushwaha explained.
On luxury consumption, Kushwaha said jewellery continues to dominate discretionary spending in India. "Indians fundamentally believe in gold," he said, estimating that 80 to 85 per cent of luxury spending by consumers goes towards jewellery. He added that India remains unique among major markets, with jewellery being “the only category where India is as big as the United States,” as higher discretionary incomes continue to translate into greater jewellery purchases rather than other luxury goods.
Store Productivity Remains The Focus
While BlueStone is targeting 705 stores and Rs 12,000 crore in revenue by the financial year 2030 (FY30), Kushwaha said the company's expansion strategy is governed by the productivity of its existing stores rather than aggressive network growth alone.
Kushwaha said the company's oldest store cohorts continue to deliver around 30 per cent growth, with no sign of growth slowing in mature stores. "For those same stores, when I look at their growth rates in the third year versus their growth rate when they are in the sixth year, we do not see any difference in the data," he said. Nearly 54 per cent of the company’s existing network is less than three years old.
On manufacturing, Kushwaha said BlueStone does not see in-house production as a cost-saving exercise but as a way to build better products. "Manufacturing directly is not a strength... What people want is a better product," he said, describing it as "an enabler" for superior product development.
The company currently operates manufacturing facilities across three cities. He added that the existing manufacturing base is sufficient for atleast next two to three years. The integrated manufacturing model of the company enables made-to-order and website orders to be produced and shipped within four to five days.
The Significance Of Omnichannel Presence
Kushwaha described Gen Z's digital-first shopping behaviour as "a double-edged sword", saying the same internet that makes it easier for BlueStone to acquire customers also makes it easier for rivals to reach them. He said the company has used its online and omnichannel capabilities to acquire users at a relatively low cost, arguing that jewellery discovery has fundamentally shifted online.
"The moment the thought of buying jewellery comes to anyone's mind, they go online and they start looking you up," he said, adding that BlueStone's digital-first approach has remained central since the company started as a website-first business.
He argued that while everything has become omnichannel from a consumer’s perspective, much of the jewellery industry has not. "From a consumer's perspective, everything is omnichannel these days," Kushwaha said, adding that many traditional jewellers still treat their websites as marketing tools rather than shopping platforms.
Riding The AI Wave
Kushwaha said that artificial intelligence has become an extension of capabilities the company has built over the years. "Technology is something which is very fundamental in our DNA," he said, adding that BlueStone has developed its entire technology stack in-house, including its website, point-of-sale systems, factory management and accounting platforms. "We are the only jewellery company that has the entire technology stack built in-house," he claimed.
He said AI has been deployed across customer engagement, marketing and product discovery rather than for a single business function. According to Kushwaha, the company uses AI to recommend relevant products from its catalogue of around 10,000 designs, conduct sentiment analysis of customer interactions across its store network, and assess why customers ultimately make or abandon purchases. "Many of those things were just not possible at scale till around five years back," he said.
Kushwaha added that AI is also helping analyse customer interactions across hundreds of stores and supporting product development and marketing decisions. He maintained that BlueStone's technological edge stems from being "more of a technology company" since its inception in 2012, with AI strengthening rather than replacing that core capability.
Focusing On What’s Next
Kushwaha said investors and industry observers often place too much emphasis on historical trends while underestimating the pace at which consumers and technology are evolving. "People tend to underappreciate" the speed of digitisation and changing consumer behaviour, he said, arguing that the industry can no longer rely on linear assumptions based on the past 10 or 20 years.
Instead, he urged businesses to focus on where consumers will be over the next decade. "The world order is going to change," Kushwaha said, adding that companies should identify the "natural beneficiaries" of that changing landscape. He reiterated that understanding evolving consumer behaviour remains more important than looking backwards, remarking that “my wife does not shop the way my mother used to shop and my daughter definitely is not going to shop the way my wife shops.”
On BlueStone's next phase of growth, Kushwaha said the company's biggest operating leverage will come from store productivity. "The biggest operating leverage is actually sitting in vintage," he said, adding that stores continue to strengthen as they mature. |
