Diamond jewellery market sparkles

Diamond jewellery market is growing at a steady clip despite the fact that in the past two years, prices have almost doubled, according to S. Prem Kishan, Managing Director, Viswa & Devji Diamonds Pvt Ltd, Coimbatore.

He said the company, with a large base in West Asia, which opened its first showroom in India at Coimbatore, plans to focus on the South by opening showrooms in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kochi.

Speaking to Business Line on the sidelines of the four-day exhibition of rare artistically designed diamond jewellery styled ‘Rare 2012’ organised by his company here from Thursday, he said diamond price was ‘not as volatile as gold’.

It was always on an upward journey but in a more stable way. In fact, in the last couple of years, ‘it has almost doubled’ but it is not as sensitive as gold to inflation.

But it is not as liquid as gold, he added. As a seller, his company offered an assurance to buy back diamond pieces purchased from it at current market prices for life-time, he said.

Terming Coimbatore as one of the ‘most promising emerging markets’ for diamond jewellery, he said while cities such as Chennai or Bangalore were well established markets in the South, among the emerging tier II cities in the region, Coimbatore ranked at the top.

In fact, the southern market was ‘now more promising than the North’ because the economy here was doing much better, and people preferred high-quality diamond jewellery in the South.

The companyhas a manufacturing facility in Coimbatore and it entered the domestic retail segment in 2008.

Retail presence

Kishan has plans to expand the retail presence to cities such as Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kochi and his focus would be the southern market.

Kishan said the diamond market globally has been growing at the rate of 20 per cent annually but in India, the growth was higher at 30 per cent. This growth was higher than the gold jewellery market’s growth which he put at 10-15 per cent.

Design centre

He said his company imported raw diamonds for cutting and apart from meeting its own needs it also supplied diamond ornaments to other dealers in the country and also exported themto the Gulf.

A full-fledged design centre was functioning in Coimbatore with seven experts who collaborate with those in Europe and Hong Kong andmake 4,000-5,000 new designs annually.