With This Startup, India Is Showing An Interest In Online Jewellery Startup raises 500K funding from ah! Ventures, Powerhouse Ventures and others.
By Samiksha Jain •
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With the increasing use of technology, today's startups are coming-up with innovative ideas to fulfil the desire of masses. From shopping, to buying of grocery, everything today is done online. And if you thought jewellery would be one domain that would lag behind, you were so wrong!
Today, online jewellery in India is seeing a rapid growth, as Indian consumers are buying jewellery online, just like any other product of daily usage. Though the ticket size is smaller in number, but still there is a lot of scope to tap this market.
Sensing the opportunity, Arnaud Lorie, founded Joolz; an online jewellery community and a marketplace to facilitate retail jewellery. This startup is helping consumers to discover prices and options online and facilitate the offline process of buying the jewellery.
Inception
Born and brought up in Belgium, the diamond capital of the world, Lorie moved to Israel when he was 18 to join the army. He then joined his family's company- International Gemological Institute (IGI), and has now been living in India for the past 3 years. After training in one of the largest diamond factories in Navsari, Gujarat for 12 months, he started working on this new business venture – Joolz.
Founded in May 2015 with total team of 9, Joolz is an India-focused community and marketplace that brings together leading jewellery brands on a single platform. The startup aggregates and curates high-quality jewellery inventory and offers its consumers an unmatched discovery and shopping experience.
Business Model
Joolz is more than just an online sales platform as it enables two-way interaction between jewellery buyers and sellers through discussion, discovery and education. It is accessible as a smartphone app on Android and iOS platforms and also via its website.
"Buying jewellery is so closely intertwined with Indian culture that the act of simply selling it online is not going to create any significant impact in the market. We, therefore, want to be the single biggest facilitator of jewellery commerce, whether online, or more importantly offline," said Arnoud Lorie.
Funds Rolling In
Recently, Joolz has secured a funding of $500K as a part of its Pre Series A round led by ah! Ventures, to go with the other bunch of investors.
The current seed round was also led by Mahesh Ahuja, CEO, Brittman India, Powerhouse Venture's MD, Peddu, Deepak Kasthwal of M&S Partners, ex- CFO OLA Cabs, PKX Thomas - ex Technology Head, Cleartrip's Neha Shah and angel round by GSF Accelerator.
The venture plans to utilise these funds to boost operations, products, marketing and further build-up its team.
Commenting on the recent investment, Powerhouse Ventures' Managing Director Peddu said, "What attracted us most was the company's rich understanding of the jewellery space and the passion with which they are planning to transform the way consumers interact with jewellery, online and offline."
Future plans
As offline jewellery industry is valued at over $40 billion, there is a huge opportunity for Joolz and other such startups to grow significantly,by using the untouched technological initiatives. Joolz specifically, plans to reach a new group of brands and investigate new revenue models, and not just remains a company that is solemnly focused on the online traction.
In a short span of time, Joolz has reached an average selling ticket size of about Rs. 25,000 in an industry where the offline ticket size is still hovering at Rs. 15,000. It has even managed to clock sales that have ranged up to Rs. 3 Lakhs (DURATION? Monthly, weekly?).
"The online jewellery market in India is expected to grow at $3.6 billion over the next three years, which in itself makes the sector a lucrative one to invest in. In addition to that, given the background of the founder and their in-depth understanding of the business, this enterprise has from the very beginning started off on the best foot possible," said Harshad Lahoti, Founder and CEO of ah! Ventures.
