IndiaRetailBiz

The branded jewellery market growing at the 40% CAGR is estimated to go beyond two billion dollars by 2010. While, this may appear to be huge, it is still nothing compared to the overall size of the Indian jewellery market.” — McKinsey.

Leveraging on growing demand for jewellery in general and branded jewellery in particular, which besides gold also includes jewellery made from precious stones (diamonds, pearls, etc) and precious metals (platinum and silver), Reliance Retail launched its first branded jewellery speciality store called ‘Reliance Jewel’ in Jaynagar area of Bangalore. Reliance Jewel spread over 6,000 sq. ft. of retail space on three floors will offer about 10,000 varieties of jewellery of different regions made out of gold, diamond, platinum and silver.

‘Reliance Jewel’ which will be in direct competition with the likes of Tanishq (Tatas), is betting big on this segment. It will set up 300 speciality stores in three years (2010) across metros, tier-II and tier-III cities.

Hyderabad and Ludhiana are slated to be the next destinations for Reliance Jewel stores. The group has already launched two of its speciality formats, namely, Reliance Wellness (Healthcare) and Reliance Footprint (footwear) in Hyderabad, while it has also launched two other speciality formats Reliance Trendz (Apparel) and Reliance Digital (IT and durables) in the National Capital Region (NCR). Besides these, Reliance has set up about 390 Reliance ‘Fresh’ convenience and one Reliance ‘Mart’ (hypermarket) stores across different geographies of India.

“It is a huge market and we are targeting about 10% of that going forward. By 2010, we plan to overtake Tata’s Tanishq, the largest organised player in this market now,” said Ashok Kaul, Biz Head and VP-Jewellery, Reliance Industries Ltd.

Reliance Jewels sees huge potential in this segment and expects to eventually contribute 6% of the group’s overall retail business. Some experts put the market size to be around Rs. 18,000 crore.