Tata Group firm Titan is aiming for the ‘pole position’ in the lab-grown diamond (LGD) category with its brand beYon, MD Ajoy Chawla said in an investor call on Wednesday. The company, best known for brands such as Tanishq, Mia and Zoya, had announced last week that it was entering the LGD space with beYon at a time when consumption in the segment has grown on the back of falling prices.
“In beYon, we are playing to win,” Chawla, who took over as Titan MD on January 1, told analysts. “We aim to be in the pole position in lab-grown diamonds,” he said, adding that the company would take cues from its gold and studded jewellery playbook for beYon.
Retail Expansion Beyond Metros
Chawla, who was earlier CEO of Titan’s jewellery division, also added that the company would not restrict itself to top metro cities in terms of store launches but was looking to go beyond into tier-2 and 3 markets. The company, he said, would also tap both online and offline channels to grow beYon and would have an aggressive pricing strategy for the brand.
‘”Initially we will look to understand how the market works and the assumptions on unit economics and topline. This will likely play out over the first 5-10 stores. The stores will be launched in the coming months,” Chawla told investors on beYon’s retail strategy.
Coexistence of Natural and Lab-Grown
According to Titan’s estimates, the LGD market is under 2% of the diamond-studded jewellery market in India. According to industry estimates, India’s natural diamond market was pegged at around $10 billion, while lab-grown diamonds represented a smaller $0.4 billion in terms of size. Both markets would grow in the next few years.
While natural diamonds would likely double in size to $20 billion by 2030, according to Al Cook, CEO of the De Beers Group, lab-grown diamonds, according to experts, would reach around $1 billion in terms of size by the end of the decade.
Chawla said that the LGD market had potential for growth in India. “It is very early at this stage and we know that we can do this (launch of beYon) even while evolving and continuing to invest strongly in our existing precious diamond brands, which is Tanishq, Mia, CaratLane and Zoya,” Chawla said, adding he saw no cannibalisation of sales with the launch of beYon.
Titan’s jewellery division head Arun Narayan said beYon had been created to drive adoption of diamonds in India. “Our first learning has been that India is an ‘and’ market where both can coexist,” he told analysts.
The brand will feature LGD pieces crafted in 18-carat and 14-carat gold. This will be priced between Rs 23,000-25,000 a carat, lower than the market rate of Rs 30,000 a carat.
“We’ve priced ourselves aggressively. The idea is to encourage people to adopt diamonds and buy diamond jewellery more frequently. We will evolve our pricing based on our learnings,” Narayan said.