Being called a game-changer in the jewellery industry, a new mobile app lets you try over 1,000 pairs of earrings virtually. It also lets you share it on social media with your friends to help pick what suits best. By Rupinder Kaur
Buying a simple, yet elegant, piece of jewellery can often turn into a strenuous task. After all, it is more of an emotional purchase than just a piece of glittery metal. The recommendations from the next-door Mrs or the numerous aunties would precede numerous trips to the high-end stores in various Nagars and Vihars or maybe Old Delhi shops which people will swear by. The day is planned meticulously, with at least a few members of your kin assigned to lend company and help you pick what looks best. This is followed by careful scrutinisation of each piece while sipping chai and if rejected, the same exercise will be repeated in another shop of maybe another market place.
India’s largest online jewellery portal Carat lane, since its launch in 2009, has been trying to make the process of purchase much simpler and now has brought in a new 3D app. Mithun Sacheti, Co-founder and CEO, shares what made him go virtual for his products.
“Two major reasons why people take a lot of time to buy jewellery are trust, which is built over time, and how a piece of jewellery will look on them. Currently, Indians are shopping more on the Internet, than they have ever before. Sixty per cent of this traffic comes from the purchases made on mobile phoines. A mobile app was something we kept discussing and if it is only about shopping then we are going to solve any problems that crop up for the customer. We’ve had a mobile site for long time and we believed that unless we solved an issue for a consumer, we will not have a mobile app,” he explains.
Caratlane app is what he calls a “game changer” for the jewellery industry. One would only require a smartphone with a front camera, good lighting and the tresses pulled back. “The technology has progressed and it is completely three-dimensional. If it is an hook earring, it’ll pierce right through the ear lobe and go on the other side. Along with the movements of your head, the angles of the earrings would also change. It allows you to try as many as 1,000 earrings,” Sacheti says.
Born to a family involved in the jewellery business, which that is extremely design-oriented and the focus is on top five per cent of the Indian population. “That is what I have inherited and it was not something I got to choose on,” he quips.
“While growing up,” he says, “we would always hear our family members, friends and others complimenting our beautiful jewellery but they would say ‘I wish I could afford that.’ After I did my gemology and moved to Chennai to set up stores for the family, this thought remained and would bother me that why are we so elitistIJ”
That is when Sancheti realised that design doesn’t have to be at a certain price point and also that it was also important to impart information about solitaires which have entered the market and is turning out to be the new luxury statement.
“Solitaire was another area which almost became a statement. It is a product which holds maximum value in the smallest size possible and thus knowledge and trust should always be kept in mind while buying it. If you could democratise that knowledge and people discover more about it, there is no reason why the consumers should not be educated about it, and thus we could sell it to a much larger audience,” he tells us.
Reaching out to a larger audience using the power of the internet was another line of thought on which he and co-founder Gopal wanted to work on since “the cost of running one shop is very high.”
Timely creation of jewellery items, power of the internet to reach out to more customers and knowledge of design and solitaires was the genesis of the brand.
“It was 2009 and we were talking about selling jewellery online which was still very early. People were still getting a hang of the internet and were starting to buy books and electronics. We knew fashion would come next and after that jewellery. But we were ready early enough because it takes five years to establish that whole supply chain and business. There were 40-50,000 users a day and we figured out that there was a small percentage of population which is ready to buy online and there is a larger set which was browsing but wasn't ready to buy it online,” Sancheti informs.
This led to their next most innovative channel which was ‘Try At Home’ (available in 20 cities), where people could order five pieces of jewellery at their house and they would send them across to try out and purchase.
Sancheti tells us about their retail stores which are “very different from the traditional jewellery stores.”
“There are almost 95 per cent of people who are browsing online but aren’t ready to buy it and it was for them that we wanted to make the first transaction easier. Then maybe the next time they will trust us enough to purchase again via the app. This was the thought behind the store, where it was important to remove barriers. We did not want security guards outside or glass shutters. We didn’t want glass doors from where you walk in. We opened these stores which have a very different experience. Thirty per cent of the inventory we like to put out in the open so that you can get an experience and get to play with it,” he shares.
Focussing on three-dimensional designs, the regularly updated, latest 3D printing technology is incorporated which has been used by them since the last six-seven years.