Gems and Jewellery Sector in India: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

This article is about explaining the Gems & Jewellery sector in India, their opportunities and challenges. It discusses how the sector has enriched with growth in past years and how government policies and consumer purchasing pattern have affected it. This article gives an idea to any individual what gems and jewellery sector is revolving around. Though this studies highlights the point that Indian Jewellery Businesses, both retail & wholesale sectors are struggling in meeting the current demand & supply in the market. There are different challenges faced by them, such as meeting the customer’s expectation for new designs in short intervals which appears impossible for some small scale jewellers since they have very low sales and hence face difficulties in maintaining new stock. The weak point noticed here was very few were confident about making an investment in jewellery because of fluctuating gold prices and lack of new designs with the local retailers. We have seen how millennial prefer imitation jewellery over precious jewellery for reasons like cost saving, opportunity to purchase new designs regularly, low risk of theft/ lost, does not get affects due to price fluctuations of commodity (Gold/Silver). Whereas the older generation prefer to invest in precious jewellery & commodity because they consider it to be a safest investment which also add value to life. Towards the end of 2019 it was reported that this world has around 1,97,576 tons of gold above the ground (mined). It is scattered in different forms like Jewellery: 92,947 tones (47%), Private Investment: 42,619 tones (21.6%), Official Holdings: 33,919 tones (21.6%), Other: 28,090 tones (14.2%). Below ground reserves are estimated to be around 54,000 tons as of now. As per the data we can see that gold is majorly used for minting coins and manufacturing jewellery.