Mumbai: The direct-to-consumer brand, CaratLane, has recorded its best-ever revenue of Rs 288 cr. during the quarter, even though Q2 is usually the leanest quarter of the year. The 2-year revenue CAGR is at 47%. The strong growth, which has not come at the cost of efficiency, is driven by a broad-based high intent customer demand and specific actions taken over the years to reduce customer friction.
The brand strength of CaratLane, continues to grow at a rapid pace, resulting in continued gaining of new customers across the length and breadth of the country, along with strong contribution from repeat purchases and increasing ticket size. The brand searches grew by 48% over last year, while new customer acquisition grew by 105% for the brand, demonstrating growing awareness and a very high intent for the brand.
The online and offline channel distinction has blurred for CaratLane and the company’s marketing, inventory management, sales incentives etc. has also evolved to approach the business as omni model. This has resulted in online-influenced retail orders (consumers browsing online before transacting at stores) improving to 59% compared to 52% last year and increased the consumer conversion by 25%. The brand has seen growth across geographies, while there has been 100% and 188% growth in top 7 cities store cities respectively, showing that there is a lot of headroom for growth, even the non-store cities have grown at 100% which shows that consumers are not afraid to shop online even from smaller cities.
The brand stores have been growing rapidly with 43% of stores being in non-metro towns, reflecting the universal appeal of the brand. The browsing activity of the customers also guide the opening of new stores which drastically improve the conversion in those cities. The numbers of cities that CaratLane stores are present in is 34% higher compared to last year.
Jewellery has always been considered the best gift and now CaratLane offers customers a wide range of unique and affordable designs. The gifting share of online orders for the brand have grown by 20% over Q1. CaratLane offers over 1,500 designs in the sub 20,000 category which is perfect for gifting for key occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and for kids.
CaratLane is playing the Kid’s category (new-born to young kids) with a thought through strategy and not by just offering the mini version of women’s jewellery, as being done by traditional players. CaratLane has taken the rights for the popular cartoon characters like Peppa Pig, Power Puff Girls & Dora and possess sophisticated design & manufacturing capabilities that is essential to produce such intricate pieces. Most stores have an attractive kids section, positioning the brand as a kids’ jeweller too.
Mithun Sacheti, Founder and Managing Director of CaratLane commented, “CaratLane,has been relentless in significantly strengthening its brand, widening the product portfolio, expanding geographically and gaining new customers during the challenging times of last 18 months, resulting inQ2’22 being its best-ever quarter even though Q2 is seasonally weak quarter. Q2’22 recorded revenue of Rs 289 cr., a 2-year CAGR of 47%, an industry-beating growth rate. These initiatives are continuously adding the fire power to keep up the exceptional pace of growth.So far we have served half a million customers across the country.
Strong brand strength, superior product mix, low customer acquisition cost and efficient operations, along with operating leverage has led to improved profitability. We delivered EBIT margin of 5% in Q2’22, compared to EBIT breakeven seen in Q2 of last year. . We have achieved the rare distinction of achieving profitability amongst the B2C start-ups, while continuing to grow at rapid pace in a marketplace, with very large addressable opportunity, which is being under-served by legacy players.It is a matter of pride for us that over the last 12 years, we have painstakingly built this profitably growing brand with total fund infusion of only $64 million till date in the Company, another rarity amongst all B2C start-ups.”
Mithun added, “CaratLane is witnessing a faster traction in international market, with 5,000+ customers served in Q2 alone, where wesell profitably, through online channel only.We opened a warehouse in New York to enable faster shipping for US orders going forward. This is another step towards our vision of becoming a jeweller to the word!”
Keeping up to its core ethos of innovation to create disproportionate value for the jewellery customers, CaratLane, launched a jewellery rental app called AuDorn, which helps consumers rent jewellery from iconic global jewellery brand like Tiffany, Cartier and Jaipur Gems. The app has nearly 10k downloads, within 3 months of launch.”
Shaya the silver jewellery brand has seen a 41% growth over last year, and has also launched its first shop-in-shop in Mumbai towards the end of this quarter.
*Standalone financials of CaratLane Trading Private Limited
