How GIVA Crafted An INR 500 Cr+ Brand On Silver Jewellery And Lab-Grown Diamonds
Silence is golden, speech is silver. An Indian trio defied the old adage. They went vocal and struck gold while dealing in silver.
It wasn’t easy for Ishendra Agarwal, Nikita Prasad, and Sachin Shetty to start up with silver jewellery studded with lab-grown diamonds in a market traditionally obsessed with buying, storing and reselling gold.
Their brainchild, GIVA, started taking baby steps in 2019 as a direct-to-customer (D2C) jewellery ecommerce brand based in Bengaluru. Six years on, it has grown into an INR 505 Cr brand in the silver and lab-grown diamond jewellery space.
While India’s fragmented jewellery market has seen some formalisation with organised jewellery chains like Kalyan Jewellers and PC Jeweller branching out to various cities, digitally native platforms like Bluestone and Tata Group-owned CaratLane rode the ecommerce wave to woo young consumers with evolving tastes.
GIVA was born at the cusp of this transformation, when millennial and Gen Z consumers were exploring virtual platforms for buying precious stones. Through the next two years of the COVID pandemic, ecommerce gathered momentum and fostered the rise of D2C brands in the jewellery vertical.
The first task for GIVA was to modernise silver jewellery as a low-cost option for young Indians, and then it had to resolve the challenge of the trust deficit in Indian consumers while buying jewellery online.
The company set up its first exclusive store in Bengaluru in 2022 after the pandemic as offline retail rebounded and jewellery buyers were more keen on a touch-and-feel factor. The offline channel complemented the virtual presence for a wider market reach.
“A 100% surge in FY25 revenue from INR 250 Cr a year back propelled us to be a formidable market force,” founder and chief executive Agarwal told Inc42 in an exclusive interaction.
CaratLane leads the D2C jewellery market with a topline of INR 3,080 Cr in FY24. Tata Group acquired the startup for a back in 2023.
While Bluestone, a major competitor of GIVA, plans to raise INR 1,000 Cr from its upcoming public issue, GIVA has so far raised $105 Mn (more than INR 870 Cr) from investors like PeakXV Partners, Premji Invest, Blume Ventures, and Titan Capital.
Call it the newfound love of young Indians for jewellery other than gold, or the revival of consumption, catalysed by the softening of consumer price inflation to 4.6% in FY25 and higher discretionary spending, GIVA’s trajectory of growth in topline is one for the books.
The startup recorded a 66% YoY revenue growth in FY24, although its losses widened to INR 58.6 Cr. Its EBITDA margin in FY25 dropped slightly from -7% to -8% YoY due to offline expansion with the launch of 80 new outlets during the year.
India is the second-largest importer of silver and one of the biggest producers of silver jewellery. While the in India is projected to average a 5.97% growth from 2025 to 2029, the silver jewellery segment alone is expected to in this period.
“Silver’s understated elegance makes it suitable for any kind of occasion. It’s affordable yet classy, it’s subdued yet gaudy – just what Gen Z looks for,” Agarwal said. “It is largely a similar story when it comes to lab-grown diamonds. It finds a huge potential in the younger consumer class, which seeks aspirational, modern designs at affordable prices.”
From being a trendsetter in lab-grown diamonds to introducing sub-brands in various categories for India’s digital-first consumers, GIVA made great strides in FY25, making its way into the league of top online jewellery retailers.
Lab And Loyalty: Double-Engine Growth DriverGIVA has been a frontrunner in lab-grown diamond (LGD) retail in India. Unlike the US and other developed economies, the market in India is still a small one at $300-350 Mn, but it is expected to over the next decade, in step with a global average of 16% and a rising demand for diamond-studded jewellery among urban Indian consumers.
“If you see the diamond industry globally, in the US and Europe, in addition to expensive mined diamonds and cubic zirconias, a new form of diamond that is grown artificially in laboratories at high temperatures became a rage over the last decade. These lab-grown diamonds are created under the same conditions as the Earth’s crust with the same carbon composition. This was not only 50-60% cheaper than mined diamonds but was also viewed as a sustainable jewellery,” the GIVA chief executive told Inc42.
Lab-grown diamonds, according to Agarwal, occupied 55% market share in the US diamond jewellery space. The where consumers are more price sensitive and value conscious. “Traditional jewellery retailers, however, weren’t the first to adopt lab-grown diamonds in their inventories because of piled up stocks of mined diamonds and a global drop in jewellery prices,” he said.
Although the margins of 30-40% in lab-grown diamonds are similar to mined diamonds, there was still a huge uncertainty in a market like India, Agarwal said. New-age companies like GIVA forayed into manufacturing diamonds, observing two aspects. First, there was a growing shift towards diamond-studded jewellery world over, with diamonds rapidly gaining prominence from 7% of the jewellery market in 2019 to 17% in 2024 and expected to , growing at 20% per year. Second, there were adequate facilities available for manufacturing diamonds in India.
“There are multiple manufacturing facilities and companies that are into lab-grown diamonds. The Surat Diamond Park inaugurated in 2023 by PM Narendra Modi also focussed a lot on lab-grown diamonds,” Agarwal said.
“This underscores the reason for us being one of the first-movers in this category which generated INR 100 Cr, or 20%, of our revenues in FY25. The penetration of lab-grown diamonds is still 10% in the overall diamond jewellery space and there is a huge unaddressed market.”
GIVA went on to add yet another revenue moat by rolling out its loyalty programme, GIVA Crown, which has made repeat purchases, a critical metric in the D2C landscape, attractive to customers.
“We have seen a two-fold increase in the number of repeat customers in FY25 compared to the last year, thanks to the introduction of the loyalty programme. The revenues from these repeat customers has also grown 2.5 times, with repeat orders constituting 35-40% of our overall sales,” Agarwal said.
Driven By Data: GIVA Ramps Up Offline ExpansionBeing digitally native, brands like GIVA had access to consumer behaviour or preference data across numerous pincodes and cities in different states. “We are the second-largest online retailer in terms of total traffic and we are present across all marketplaces and quick commerce channels,” the CEO said.
Agarwal said the online data helps it zero in on strategic store locations and lay out the expansion blueprint. GIVA follows a mix of franchise and company-owned stores model for its offline presence.
“We look at the city-level data in terms of online traffic as well as purchases before deciding to go offline there. The next step is to identify a location to set our shop close to the place where most retailers are clustered. We also look for strategic locations close to women fashion brands like H&M, Zara or even F&B outlets like McDonalds and Burger King. These are certain things we consider before expanding offline.”
To be operationally profitable, Agarwal mentioned that any store which is 3-4 months old turns profitable, as the fixed costs incurred on manpower and infrastructure do not increase substantially over time, but sales continue to rise.
“One of the reasons for GIVA having been able to contain losses is due to the fact that our vintage stores have picked up nicely on the revenue front and are now generating funds to open new stores,” the CEO said.
Beyond Omnichannel StrategyWhile one may target all the channels to reach a wider consumer base, D2C brands rely on product diversification to maintain audience appeal.
The GIVA chief executive said that the jewellery brand introduced various sub-categories like Heer By GIVA which is gold-plated lab-grown diamond-studded men’s jewellery, nose pins, and anklets.
Men’s jewellery, in particular, has shifted from low-cost junk jewellery to finer materials like silver, reflecting changing consumer preferences. Rose gold and rhodium-plated collections also perform strongly, catering to the demand for trendy, versatile pieces. These categories align with GIVA’s focus on affordable, fashion-forward jewellery for daily wear, Agarwal said.
The jewellery soonicorn has had major successes so far in the six years. But GIVA has miles to go to create a lasting lustre in India’s jewellery market, where gold still rules the roost.
While it would be a mammoth task for the startup to induce a change in India’s traditional affinity for gold and natural diamonds, it will simultaneously have to compete with both legacy brands and an increasing number of new-age D2C rivals.
GIVA, as per Agarwal, has a 1.5% share of the studded jewellery market in India, while CaratLane enjoys a 5% slice of the pie. Legacy players like Kalyan and Malabar still dominate the offline space, while D2C brands like Voylla, Palmonas, and Jar’s Nek keep the online turf on the boil.
GIVA says its USP will lie in affordability, quality, and lab-grown diamonds, but capturing a larger market share requires sustained investment in brand building and differentiation. There are also fears of a market surplus in lab-grown diamonds – much like what happened in the US, where supplies exceeded demands, and the fad for man-made diamonds began fading, setting the prices downhill.
The jewellery startup plans to hit the capital market in three years with a deeper and wider presence and greater acceptance. In March, of the startup raising INR 102 Cr (about $11.7 Mn) in a mix of equity and debt from Alteria Capital and Northern Arc to widen its retail footprint.
The tale of the trailblazer in the Indian jewellery market is that of thinking beyond the ordinary. The three cofounders had germinated the seed six years back, which grew up to redefine the taste of fine jewellery in a dynamic consumer class. What remains to be seen is how it plays out in the later stage, with roots running deep into the purchasing behaviour of consumers and branches spread across a market of evolving preferences.
[Edited By Kumar Chatterjee]
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