Daybreak - Has Giva found a new silver lining in India's gold-obsessed jewellery market?

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

Giva is shaking up India’s jewellery market, long dominated by gold, with an unexpected bet on silver. Founded in 2019, the company has already grown into a $2 billion brand by targeting the massive but largely unorganized silver jewellery segment.Unlike competitors such as Caratlane and Bluestone that built their businesses around gold and diamonds, Giva has leaned on an “affordable luxury” play—high-margin silver products, agile design cycles, and impulse-friendly purchases. But challenges loom. Rising silver prices could cut into margins, and its aggressive offline push will test whether silver can truly rival gold in a market steeped in tradition.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Ramon Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. We all know the Indian jewelry market has long been synonymous with gold. But turns out, that might be a bit of a misconception.

You see, in 2024 alone, Indians bought more than 2,500 tons of silver jewelry, worth nearly $9 billion. But this massive silver market has been heavily unorganized. There wasn't a single branded player that had set benchmarks for design, quality or pricing. That was exactly the opening Ishendra Agarwal saw when he was a consultant at BCG Mumbai in 2018. Today, he's the founder of Jiva, a silver-focused jewelry brand that's valued at a little more than $2 billion. Of course, this gap was both an opportunity and a challenge. for him. While gold was teaming with established players like Tanishk, Kalyan jewelers,

Malabar gold and diamonds, silver had no such stalwarts. Even the largest player, Titan, commanded only about 5% of the total silver market. So while Bluestone and Carrot Lane focused on gold and diamond jewelry, Agarwal placed his bet on silver and in 2019, Jiva was born. His thesis was basically this. While gold may be deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche, silver offers better margins and way higher footfall. As of now, the silver jewellery-focused retailer has since posted a year-on-year growth of around 50%. They have 400,000 daily visitors on their website and in 2022, they expanded into offline stores.

According to Business Intelligence Platform Toffler, they touched nearly 300 crore rupees in revenue in FY24 and in FY25, Agarwal claims to have hit more than 500 crore rupees in revenue. Compare this to Caratlane and Bluestone. They took between 6 to 9 years to reach the same levels. But the thing is, silver prices are rising. And that may be turning Jiva's almost prophetic bet back on itself. Right now, silver prices have crossed the 90,000 rupees per KG mark and that represents a 20% year-on-year increase.

In comparison, gold stands at about 12%. Higher silver prices mean higher input costs for Jiva, which in turn could translate into much. lower margins. Of course, passing these costs onto consumers is not an option. At least not without denting its affordable luxury image. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your new host, Rachel Verhese, and every day of the week, my co-host, Nikka Sharma and I will bring you one new story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 8th of September. According to Bluestone, India's jewelry market is valued at nearly $60 billion today and could grow to

$100 billion by 2028. An industry insider told us that the economics were compelling from day one. Gold jewelry typically carries up to 15% gross margins, of course, due to the medal's inherent value and pricing transparency. On the other hand, as Deepak Tulsihan, a jewelry consultant tells us, with silver jewelry, the margins can be as high as 50%. That's because silver jewelry pricing isn't tied to silver rates the way gold jewelry is. It's sold at a fixed MRP and that includes making charges as a significant part.

That's not all. Now, according to Agarwal, while gold customers typically purchase just once or twice a year, Jiva's silver customers buy nearly four times a year. That's more than double. Jiva's average order value or AOV of rupees 4,500, also means customers feel more comfortable making quick online purchases. According to Bluestone's draft papers, the AOV for gold retailers, meanwhile is 45,000 rupees. The thing is, the low prices and carrot age that is 14 and 18 for gold, ultimately translates to more customers buying impulsively and being more willing to

experiment. This willingness to experiment has sparked another Jiva strategy. Rather than betting big on untested designs, it orders smaller quantities of multiple designs, test the market response and only then do the restock the bestsellers in large quantities. According to Ishendra Agar while in this business, it's pretty hard to predict which design will do well. So, Jiva ensures that it launches designs continuously and they only restock the ones that receive a good response. An industry insider tells us that the company has an inventory turnover ratio of up to four times annually, and that is pretty impressive, especially when you compare it to the one

to three times for traditional retailers who often struggle with slow-moving high-value inventory. Jiva has also been able to grow its product portfolio in leaps and bounds. It has about 7,000 SKUs in silver and 1,500 SKUs in gold. Then, it has lab-grown diamonds which are priced at up to 35,000 rupees. It has also forayed into jewelry for men and children, plus fragrances. They have it all. Now, their shift into lab-grown diamonds is also what triggered the next stage of their growth phase. Offline stores.

Stay tuned for more on this. Ishendra Agarwal tells us that while Jiva started online, when they expanded into lab-grown diamonds and gold, they realized that customers would want to touch and feel those products. Jiva opened its first store in 2022, and within six months it had expanded to 30 stores. Its new Omnichannel approach mirrors the playbook of Carrot Lane and Bluestone, but with better unit economics.

Largely because it spends only 14% of its overall revenue on rent, compared to the competitors 25%. But, according to industry insiders, Jiva's speed may be cause for concern. A former executive of a known jewelry brand told us that it took carrot-layed nearly two decades to open more than 300 stores. Now, if you compare this with Giva's 200-plus stores across six years, a question does come up. What are the chances that the company would have selected all the right locations, ensured lower rent, and built an online customer base that would guarantee quick profitability when the stores launched?

The implied answer is well, pretty low. To be fair though, Jiva store sizes are quite modest. They started at 400 square feet and now as a product lines have expanded, they have moved to stores as big as 2,000 square feet. But that's still significantly smaller than traditional retailers whose stores stretch well into the 3,000 square feet mark. Although, the footfall in Jiva stores does tend to be higher. At the moment, the company's distribution is 52% offline and 48% online. According to Agarwal, nearly 30% of their online sales come from e-commerce and quick commerce. However, marketplace commissions for e- and quick-commerce are as high as 30% and as these channels keep growing,

so will the distance between Jiva and profitability. But that's not the only challenge that Jiva may be facing as a pioneer in silver jewelry sales. More in the next segment. You see, when you're innovating in relatively uncharted territory, that can come with its own challenges. A jewelry analyst told us that silver jewelry is not very popular in India. It's high maintenance because of oxidization forces over time and manufacturing costs are also high. Now, Jiva has been trying to combat some of this. It uses its plating facility in Jaipur that offers customers' lifetime-free replating services,

albeit at a cost of $399. The company claims this is India's largest plating factory, and this allows them to control the biggest problem with silver jewelry, tarnishing. Also, as we all know, silver just doesn't offer the same investment value as gold and diamonds. Tulsihan, the expert we mentioned earlier, says, even if you melt it down, you'll lose 15 to 20% of the silver. If you spend 1 lakh rupees and the underlying metal is worth only 15,000 rupees, how can it be an investment? For his part, Agarwal argues that the company has positioned silver not as a cheap alternative to gold, but as accessible fine jewelry for. daily wear. He explained that if Jiva offers daily wear jewelry at 1500 rupees and a person

wears a piece every day for say three months, the per day investment is around 17 rupees, and that's what customers find valuable. So here's the thing. No brand centered around silver has taken off to this scale. Even Carrot Lane's six-year-old silver brand Shaya remains much smaller. It accounted for just under 3% of Carrot Lane's $3,500,000,000.000,000,000 grow revenue in FY24. So maybe Jeeva can go where no brand has gone before. But that's considering the very thing that brought it here, Silver, doesn't end up becoming a liability going forward.

Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Varghis and edited by

Rajiv Sien.