WirelessDuniya caught up with Gaurav S Issar, Founder & CEO of India’s no 1 online Jewellery market place on its future plans.
Gaurav Issar is the force behind JewelsNext.com. He is a First Generation Entrepreneur and has been aggressively building businesses since last 14 years with his experience as a Gemologist, Retailer, Manufacturer domains in the gems and jewellery industry. Gaurav founded IDT (Institute of Diamond Trade India) which is India’s first and largest network of Gem certification laboratories with a pan India network. IDT certifies jewellery for over 1400 jewellery stores and brands across India in 10 states and employs over 50 people. Gaurav knows the Jewellery Industry from core to the Crust.
Gaurav is a Management Graduate and has done certificate course in diamond grading and identification of gemstones. He is also Managing Partner at Onlygems Ecommerce LLP. Onlygems is a company owns the first retail brand for gemstones in India.
Connect with Gaurav on Linkedin
What is JewelsNext.com all about? What problem are you solving?
JewelsNext.com is India’s no.1 online jewellery market place concept to sell and buy jewellery online. A one stop junction for various sellers and brands to present and market themselves digitally. Jewelsnext.com takes complete ownership of the Ecommerce ecosystems including its supply chain, call centres and Digital marketing operations. We are focused on bridging the online-offline gap for the customers.
Tell us the story of how it started and the challenges you have faced so far ?
Jewellery is a high capital investment and a showroom or a warehouse (in ecommerce terms) venture. I always wanted to get into jewellery but without sitting on the showroom. I was aiming at a macro approach towards the industry so the idea of a marketplace model was something I had been eyeing on for the past 3 years. I started IDT in 2002 for certification of diamonds, gems & jewellery. Today, it is India’s largest network of Gem Certification laboratories with presence in 14 states and expanding. Recently we started operations in Dubai (UAE). The success of IDT helped me in taking the challenge of getting into the jewellery e-commerce sector.
Initially we faced challenges, but later things became smooth. Jewellery in India is a $16 billion unorganized sector and jewelers work with a conventional approach. So, e-commerce in jewellery was not welcomed. It took us time to make the jewellery fraternity understand that a marketplace model is the need of the hour. We explained them that given variety, discounted price along with IDT and BIS certification there would be a great demand. For a pathbreaking concept like JewelsNext.com we had to solve a pain (customers having access to pan India jewelers) and give a gain (jewelers selling across India).
Now, a customer sitting in Delhi or across India has an opportunity to buy the incredible Indian jewellery and get it delivered to and from 2000 pin codes across India. Jaipur is famous for gemstones, Hyderabad for pearls, Delhi and Mumbai for diamonds, Chennai, Cochin and Bengaluru for plain gold jewellery, Jammu for blue sapphires. Similarly, every Indian city has some or the other specialty. So, keeping in mind the above, marketplace was what I was always eyeing.
Everything from business development (bringing vendors on board) to logistics, operations, support teams, photography, technology, alliances, recruitment, accounting etc. has been tough initially but has been settling on in the past one year.
How is your site so different when there are already ecommerce websites selling similar products?
As already said, JewelsNext.com is India’s no.1 online jewellery market place to sell and buy jewellery online. We have managed to bring 50 retailers and Brands on JewelsNext and thousands of satisfied customers– and still counting! With over 100,000 jewellery products, 11 different categories, with thousands of registered users, it is one of the leading e-commerce Marketplace verticals in the country.
What technology platform is your site built on? Is it in-house?
Yes, ours is an in-house technology platform. It took us two years to develop an in-house platform to enable e-commerce of jewellery.
What initiatives are you planning in the next 2-3 years?
2,500 jewellery shops and 5, 00,000 jewellery products on one platform i.e. making JewelsNext.com the biggest repository of Gems & Jewellery across the world. Indian ecommerce jewellery industry is at its flourishing stage. Indians are young—almost half of them are between 25-35 and growing richer. We are mostly targeting them.
Which locations is it available?
To build a major retail channel for 5000 Retailers and 500 brands across India, JewelsNext.com, India’s #1 Online marketplace for jewelry has launched vendor sales and support channels in the following cities Chandigarh, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Cochin, Ahmadabad, Mumbai, Calcutta, Bhopal, Jaipur and counting. The company aims at bringing a revolution in the Jewellery retail sector across India.
What is your Marketing/Promotional approach?
We are working on building the New Media distribution channel for Retailers who are looking at gaining a pan India Presence and sales opportunities.
Did you raise any funding? If you want to raise funds do you want to be contacted by Investors ?
No, we have not raised money. We have been contacted by couple of venture capitalists and are looking forward to raise funds.
What is the overall plan going forward?
JewelsNext aims at listing Billion dollar Inventory in next 18 months. Jewellery e- commerce is trying to capture 25% of overall 16 billion dollar Jewellery retail business in 7 years. The company is working on empowering the women buyers across the nation to buy products on Internet.
The ‘Virtual Jewellery Experience Lounge’ is an endeavor to encourage browsing among the conservative Indian customers (Family Jeweler Concept) by making the online experience more personalized. Customers can try almost 1,00,000 designs in various categories like Diamond, Gold, Silver, Artificial etc. by just clicking and uploading their photograph on JewelsNext website & can choose the best suited for them by seeing the jewellery on themselves through the Virtual Lounge. They can also evaluate the quality of the jewellery through detailed information provided about each piece of jewellery along with the certification. Customers from all across the world would have an access to the JewelsNext.com’s virtual lounge.
This is a pioneering effort in this field and will further help to bridge the online-offline gap in the jewellery e-commerce space.
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