Outlook for Precious Metals & Jewellery as an investment option for 2022
By Ramesh Kalyanaraman, Executive Director – Kalyan Jewellers
2021 has truly been a year of transition for India’s jewellery industry. With the introduction of sector-specific reforms, the industry has taken major strides towards formalization and has been witnessing an unprecedented shift of demand from unorganized to organized jewellery sector.
The dynamic market scenario and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to renewed interest from consumers who will make long-term investments in gold jewellery. Gold has always been a preferred investment option among Indians and in the post COVID-19 era, it has also emerged as the safest and most lucrative long-term asset.
Although the last couple of decades have seen the world being revolutionized by advancements in technology, Indian consumers and businesses have largely been resisting this change due to buying behaviour and huge investments, respectively.
At Kalyan Jewellers, we had been strategically preparing in anticipation of this change by making consistent investments in building a digital ecosystem. We now provide a complete 360-degree integrated shopping experience to our consumer base, ensuring they can invest in gold or purchase jewellery from anywhere, basis their convenience and comfort. As a result of this, we were well-positioned to adapt to this digital transformation and ventured into newer product categories such as digital gold as well as explored newer avenues to reach our customers by introducing services such as Gold Ownership Certificate and LIVE video shopping facility, which allowed customers to browse through and purchase jewellery at the comfort of their homes. As a company, we have taken major strides towards creating a holistic ecosystem for our customers, to provide a best-in-class service shopping experience.
The year 2021 has been momentous for our 28-year long brand journey. In March 2021, we were successfully listed on India’s stock exchange, followed by our milestone of 150 showrooms globally in October and we are concluding this year on a high note by marking our debut on the prestigious Fortune India 500 list and The Economic Times’ Top 500 Movers & Shakers list. With our customer-centric business model and revolutionary initiatives with an aggressive expansion strategy, we have been growing our dominance across India and West Asia.
We aim to continue moving forward on this growth trajectory and register consistent growth while widening our consumer base as well as providing positive returns to the investor community.
With our sizeable presence across 21 states in India and 5 countries in West Asia, we aspire to aid the growth momentum by leveraging already established processes, purchase ecosystem and market understanding. We are also widening our product portfolio with multiple region-specific jewellery collections that will cater to the distinct needs of our customers from various communities.
From a long-term perspective, we are making strategic investments in the online arm and we aim to expand its reach to more cities in India while improving our services in Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities. We are gradually working on establishing an international presence for Candere. Through this, we further aim to address the consumer demand for multiple niche segments and product categories such as white gold and platinum jewellery, catering to the preferences of the ever-growing millennial consumers in India.
With the gold prices expected to showcase an upward trend in years to come, more and more Indians are continuing the legacy of investing in the yellow metal to register long-term gains as the price of the commodity fluctuates. Recently, there has been a lot of unpredictability in the markets as the price of the commodity has been fluctuating with increasing frequency, thereby we are optimistic that the demand for jewellery will continue to increase and 2021 holds a shining future for India’s jewellery industry.
