Leading jewellers Gitanjali have launched pre-packaged diamonds that fulfill the 4C criteria and are certified by the International Gemological Institute, leaving you with no doubts on either quality or price.

"Now you don't have to check the quality and grade of your diamonds. The pre-packaged diamonds come with a certificate from the world's most reputed diamond grading institutes," says Mr Arun Bhatnagar, director, Gitanjali Gold and Precious Ltd. He says the company decided to launch this product after a market survey that showed that most women wanted to buy diamonds, but did not know how to go about it.

"This packaging takes away all doubts from the mind of the buyer," he says.The survey also showed that despite the demand for diamonds, women were apprehensive about buying them because they were unsure about the standardisation, quality and pricing.

Gitanjali has long been a site holder for De Beers diamonds, and it has associate offices in the international diamond centres of Antwerp, Bangkok, New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong. The company has its own diamond manufacturing facility, where it cuts and grades diamonds for De Beers and has a diamond cutting expert from Belgium as the supervisor of the cutting shop.

Each diamond is individually graded and has a unique laser marking on its girdle, which makes it foolproof, says Mr Bhatnagar. The company also has a buy-back scheme, where it buys back the diamond at a pre-quoted price, says Mr Bhatnagar.

The clarity of a diamond is graded on four lines, internally flawless (IS), which is a diamond that is free from internal blemishes, and is very rare to find; very, very slightly included (VVS), which has an internal or external blemish, but the blemish is hard to find even under a magnifying glass; very slightly included (VS), in which the blemishes are difficult to locate, and slightly included (SI), in which the blemishes are easy to locate under magnification. Diamonds have to conform to one of these four criteria and anything below these four standards is below par quality.

The colour is broken into five categories: colourless (very rare), near colourless, slightly tinted, very light yellow and light yellow. The third C is carat, which refers to the weight of the diamonds and the fourth is the cut, which should be Belgian ideally.