Started in 2013 Jewelhub.com, an ecommerce platform is primarily focused on diamond jewellery and provides lowest diamond prices in India. Mr. Bhavin Mehta, Co-Founder & MD, Jewelhub.com believes that their core value proposition is to attain customer satisfaction by offering absolute transparent pricing, high quality products and customization as per customer’s choice.
Talking to Estrade Mr. Mehta shared his views on current jewellery market, his policy of absolute transparent pricing and the importance of customized jewellery.
- Team Estrade: Tell us the story of how Jewelhub.com started and the challenges you have faced so far? What is the vision behind the company?
Bhavin Mehta: Jewelhub is an online portal primarily specializing in diamond jewellery and provides lowest diamond prices in India. Founded by jewellery enthusiasts, Mr. Bhavin Mehta, Co-Founder & MD, Jewelhub.com and Gurmeet Singh, Co-Founder & Director, Jewelhub.com in 2013, the company believes that their core value proposition is to attain customer satisfaction by offering absolute transparent pricing, high quality products and customization as per customer’s choice.
Our brand believes that jewellery buying and gifting is all about trust and emotions and Jewelhub.com believes every piece must be as unique as the person wearing it and that one should not compromise when it comes to the final purchase. Some of the challenges the brand has to face are, enabling a customer to trust and buy with you, while, breaking the trend of buying from their traditional family jewelers. Other challenges to be looked into are cash on delivery requirements and try, touch & feel factors as required for some customers.
- Team Estrade: What is the USP of your brand and how is it different from the other jewellery brands in the marketplace?
Bhavin Mehta: Jewelhub.com stands by “Absolute Transparent Pricing”. For the First time in the history of e-commerce, we bring to our customers specific pricing details at ‘Bill of Material’ level, a process used by wholesalers who sell to big retailers hence, providing a clear pricing detail. This kind of detailing converts all purchases to “Value Buying”. Also, “Certified Diamonds and Hallmarked Gold” have the similar store value across the globe and Jewelhub.com promises to provide the trust factor.
Jewelhub.com stands by “Customization at its Extreme”. Our technology brings in the option to change whatever one desires in a given design. Change gemstones, change metal, change diamond quality or whatever one wishes to create to make the piece suit their price point. The customer can send an image or concept sketch of the design in mind and Jewelhub.com creates options of designs based on that and offers the product as per customer’s preference.
Jewelhub.com stands by “Customer First” Policy. We exist to serve our customers and commit that all the policies would be stated upfront and there won’t be any fine print. In an unlikely event if the brand is unable to meet customer expectation, Jewelhub.com would take full responsibility and offer a replacement or a refund.
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- Team Estrade: How do you enhance customer experience at your site? What role does technology play in the same?
Bhavin Mehta: Every customer is unique and has his/her specific requirement, preferences and budget. To suit their needs we are offering every product to be customisable across 10 permutation combination of diamond clarity & colour and 2 variants of Gold colour thus amounting to 20 combinations possible. It’s very heartening to share that our customers normally upgrade the diamond quality due to this option being available to them. As, in offline stores or other online stores, they are restricted to a single combination or maximum2-3 combinations only.
Our technology brings the option to change whatever one wants in a given design. Change diamond clarity and colour, change gold colour and even colour stones in the new products being introduced, thus enabling the customer to customise the product based on quality, colour, price points to suit individual needs. If the customer is still not satisfied, they can just send us the rough sketch, design brief or even a reference image for us to customise a design from sketch level as per preferences thus enabling us to create that piece for the end customer.
- Team Estrade: What is your Marketing/Promotional approach?
Bhavin Mehta: Online advertisement is a primary marketing medium for our brand awareness. It also enables us to reach out to the masses already connected to Internet. To reach out to our specific target audiences, we look into micro-targeting on online audience using Social Media and other online advertising platforms. On the other hand, we make use of Email marketing as well to keep out existing user base updated and also inform them about our offers at regular intervals.
We are also running regular advertisements, partnering with online portals offering the target audience regular promotions in return reaching out to customers and the masses. Lastly, we segregate promotions as event based and general promotions which are marketed online through some of our offline channel partners.
“For the first time in the history of e-commerce, we bring to you pricing details at ‘Bill of Material level”
- Team Estrade: How do you manage the logistics of the online space?
Bhavin Mehta: We are trying to solve the biggest problem of Transparency that is being faced for several decades in terms of what a customer buys, what he gets and how much does he pay for that? The details shared have not been transparent enough for all these years.
For the first time in the history of e-commerce, we bring to you pricing details at ‘Bill of Material level’. This is how, wholesellers sell to Big Retailers and we bring you the same Detailing.
A customer can compare our prices with any other online site or retail outlet and will understand the difference. This detailing converts all purchases to ‘Value Buying’. Also, an important thing to be noted is that, ‘Certified Diamonds & Hallmarked Gold’ has a similar store value across the globe and, anything else is just eyewash. Having said that, we respect the customer’s intelligence.
Currently, we have approximately 1,500 designs live online with possibility of creating 16 variants to those styles. Over and above, new designs are being uploaded on daily basis. We have team of professionals with the domain knowledge of diamonds and jewellery with several years of working experience in the field thus, enabling us to use the experience as a driving factor to ensure smooth operational logistics and even forward integrate the same with the customer end experience too.
- Team Estrade: What is the demand pattern in terms of geography and is it skewed towards a particular region or segment?
Bhavin Mehta: Demand for diamonds and diamond studded jewellery is growing over the years and customers who prefer gold jewellery are moving towards diamond jewellery purchases. We have maximum traffic and customer orders from North Indian states and Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities where customers are keener for diamond studded jewellery which is followed by Western Indian states and cities. The South region predominantly has affinity towards gold jewellery but that trend is changing and there is growing demand from South India too.
“India is a fashion conscious, tech-savvy and price sensitive market and as online jewellery business brings more transparency and accessibility for a customer to order, it in turn breaks all geographical barriers for their own consumption and gifting needs.”
- Team Estrade: How do you see the future of Indian jewelry e-tailing space?
Bhavin Mehta: Offline Jewellery market in India had grown over years and, online jewellery business is at a nascent stage with sales amounting to merely 1% of the total jewellery business. Thus, online jewellery market in India has lot of potential to grow. India is a fashion conscious, tech-savvy and price sensitive market and as online jewellery business brings more transparency and accessibility for a customer to order, it in turn breaks all geographical barriers for their own consumption and gifting needs. The demographics are definitely in our favor as we have the young population having worldwide exposure and Indian customers purchase jewellery primarily for marriages and auspicious celebrations. The Indian customer is also trend conscious thus the concept of buying and gifting of diamond jewellery would increase in the coming years.
- Team Estrade: What are the short term and long term goals you have set for Jewel Hub?
Bhavin Mehta: Currently we have a lean team of 10 members and we are in the expansion process in adding additional members in our team. Also, this is our First Year of Operation and for next 3 to 4 Years we would work mainly on expanding our Reach and Growing Our Customer base along with investing in technology for our expansion of business and adding more functionality to our business model. Our Idea is to build a scalable business in a cost controlled manner. Revenue target set by us in another 18-24 months is Rs. 60-70 cr. post that we expect the business to grow at a pace of 40-50% year on year till 2017-18 with the growth scope of Online Business to be higher as currently it’s not even 1 % of the offline Retail.
JewelHub: Online jewellery business is at a nascent stage
