The Exchanges

Q So Mithun, let's step back, and can you describe us the jewelry market of India in its all glory?

A Let's divide the jewelry market into certain sections. The largest piece of the jewelry market is the plain gold jewelry business. That's an area which is the largest piece, and we frankly don't even exist in it yet. This is where people for years have invested in gold. They haven't looked at this adornment alone. You can say 70% of the thought process is investment, and 30% of their thought process is adornment in that. You think about, um, the next phase, which is, um, you know, the traditional arts of India, which is in Jaipur, you have Jadao, in South, you have temple jewelry, and so and so forth, and all other parts of India. That possibly is another 25% of the market. And that 25% of the market is very ethnic. Indians love to wear from different parts of the world, and that's why that market keeps growing, and we all enjoy that. The third part of this business is the diamond jewelry market. Now, that market is just about 50 years old. And possibly the fastest growing piece in this. It also has great value addition for everybody. And if you think that society is modernizing, you would see a lot more people wanting to wear diamond jewelry as well, because our clothing is so westernized now as compared to where we used to be before. And we are, at the end of the day, jewelry is an accessory that complements what you wear. In the diamond jewelry piece, you can say now you've …

AI assessment note: “Let's divide the jewelry market into certain sections.”

Q And that would be what number in crores?

A And, oh, but four and a half, five lakh crores is the base estimate on something like that. In our economy, that's a very large number. The beauty of this country, and you know, I'll give you a stat of this two, two and a half percent of GDP for the rest of the world, global average is .3. Okay. To .5. So we are five X to, you know, eight X of this number. And there's a beautiful story behind it as to why we are the way we are as well also. If you read Chanakya Neeti ever, and a friend of mine made me do that once. Chanakya said that beautifully, where he said, 25% of your wealth must be in the form of gold, because you don't know when you'd have to run. That's your bet against your own government. And see how it plays out, right? You had kingdoms back then. You don't know one kingdom gets overthrown by another kingdom, and then all those people who are from one religion or one area have to run to somewhere else. You can't run with your land. You have to run with your gold at that point. The second piece that happens is, look at Ukraine right now. What could people have left with? And I think that's created one big jump as well in gold consumption across. If you see pre-Ukraine war prices of gold as well as other commodities, and now you'd see that It's the only one that's gone up. Everything else has possibly stagnated or gone down in itself. So I think there's a lot of value …

AI assessment note: “four and a half, five lakh crores is the base estimate”

Q So what next? A one billion dollar revenue mark for you?

A Oh no, I think we have set ourselves five years, 10,000 crores. I mean, I think more than a billion dollars, unless the rupee further depreciates and goes in that direction. But, um, yeah, and a 20% EBIT business is a long-term healthy business, you know, so we want to work towards that. That's not on the financial side, but that's not the exciting stuff. The exciting stuff is what are we going to do for the customer? And, uh, you know, till now, we made a product available, a design available, and a certain price point and made that happen. And, uh, my co-founder of Nish, who I have a huge respect for, he's a voracious reader, and, um, he got me thinking with this, uh, whole jobs to be done sort of, uh, theory. And we realized while going through that whole process that why do people really buy jewelry? And he'd ask me this question all the time, but why do you think people are buying jewelry? And I'd be like, why do you have a problem that they're buying jewelry, right? And, uh, but that question was a lot deeper than that. And finally we figured out at least, you know, in one of my moments, I had this Eureka moment where I kind of spoke to him about, and I think together we articulated it, where people really buy jewelry to express an emotion. You know, 70,000 people in a particular quarter in Carrot Lane had given gift cards. Those gift cards are personalized messages But t…

AI assessment note: “I think we have set ourselves five years, 10,000 crores.”

Q How will you measure the business now? So one is revenue part. What are the other things?

A So you know what I love about different businesses when you see around is that we think of ourselves a bit like a SaaS business when it comes to customer lifecycle management. And you'll appreciate that because you love to invest in SaaS businesses. A lot of jewelry businesses have a very low repeat rate. Now I'm going to redefine repeat rate for a jewelry context and not from a SaaS context or from a D to C context. Of all the people who bought jewelry up to the first March, for example, how many will buy in the next financial year? If you were to look at this metric, Which is compounding in some sense in your business, right? What do you think is the average for a jewelry business?

AI assessment note: “we think of ourselves a bit like a SaaS business when it comes to customer lifecycle management”

Q Were you so philosophical before the acquisition or Tata made you so philosophical?

A No, I like to think, I like to analyze and, um, education also is like that, right? I mean, the aim of education should never be to excel, but it should be to be able to learn how to synthesize. And, uh, I enjoy that, you know, I mean, I run a class in a school over here called for entrepreneurship. It's actually a guise. It's really not entrepreneurship. It's problem solving. And I feel that my most conversation with those kids also is about how do you synthesize what you're learning? In life, the harder thing is not to find the answer. It is to find the right questions. And so I look forward to always figuring out what's the next question that we're going to solve.

AI assessment note: “No, I like to think, I like to analyze”

Q They entered less than forex, right? Revenue multiple.

A Not that. They entered it around. The harder task was to convince Tiger to leave because they just put in money. Right at that point. And they, and it was a slight, I mean, they came at 600, it was five 70. The currency fluctuation had hurt them. So they had to exit at possibly a flat round at that point. And, um, it was a harder thing for me to do. I could have easily said a 180 crores in bank. I don't think I need anybody's help to do anything. Yeah. And, uh, but no, and it didn't, but you know, credit to them that, uh, they realize as well that the entrepreneurial spirit is needed to do this thing. But to your question whether I would have sold, no, I wouldn't have. Then I would have just continued on my own path.

AI assessment note: “Not that. They entered it around. The harder task was to convince Tiger”