In India’s Rs 7.5-lakh-crore jewellery market, Titan, a part of the Tata group, is the undisputed heavyweight. Its Tanishq brand towers over the organised retail landscape, blending scale with trust in a way that few consumer brands manage.
For an up-and-coming rival, being compared to Titan is either the highest compliment or the most dangerous temptation.
Kolkata-based Senco Gold seems happy to embrace it. The 50-year-old jeweller has long been a household name in eastern India, but now it wants to play on the national stage.
The question is whether Senco is on a fast track to Titan-like glory, or whether the speed of its climb could just as easily turn into a stumble.
Why this isn’t a crazy comparison
On the surface, the growth story adds up.
Titan’s jewellery division crossed Rs 50,000 crore in FY25, up 22% year-on-year. Senco’s FY25 revenue was Rs 6,328 crore, far smaller, but up 21%. Titan has over 600 Tanishq and Mia stores across India; Senco runs 168 outlets, including franchisees. Both are adding stores steadily.
The strategy feels familiar. It includes:
Geographic expansion: Titan spent decades moving from a southern brand to a national chain. Senco is now pushing beyond its home turf; non-East markets brought in Rs 1,230 crore in FY25, growing 23%, faster than the East.
Studded push: Titan raised its studded jewellery mix to fatten margins. It is now at around 24%. Senco’s stud ratio reached 10.9% in FY25, up from 10.5% nine months earlier, after a Q4 diamond sales surge of 38% by value.
Brand extensions: Titan has CaratLane, Mia, and Taneira. Senco is testing “Sennes”, a lab-grown diamond brand, leather bags, perfumes etc. While small for now, it is a sign of lifestyle aspirations.
Senco appears to be attempting to squeeze Titan’s two-decade journey into just a few years.
The shine: where Senco is getting it right
The Senco promoter trust has been buying shares from the open market, sending a clear “we believe in this” message. That kind of signalling matters in a sentiment-driven midcap.
FY25 revenue growth of 21%, Q3 hitting an all-time high at Rs 2,100-plus crore in tandem with double-digit growth in both East and non-East markets suggest demand resilience even in a high-gold-price environment.
Diamonds were sluggish for much of FY25. However, post-festive sales surged, a 59% year-on-year growth in the past three months of the fiscal. This, apart from lifting revenues, also improves gross margins.
Sixteen new stores in FY25 (nine company-owned, six franchise, one Sennes), with a similar 20-store plan for FY26. Titan’s growth years also hinged on store density, and Senco is following suit.
Average ticket value climbed 15% to Rs 73,000 in FY25, partly due to gold price inflation, partly due to the willingness to buy higher-value pieces.
With gold prices up ~32% over the year, many jewellers face a dip in grammage per bill as customers scale back volumes to fit budgets. Senco’s product mix tilts more toward accessible lightweight jewellery, making it better placed to hold customer growth even in a high-price environment. Supportive regulations around hallmarking of 9-karat gold further add to this edge, potentially helping the brand capture demand that might otherwise be priced out of the market.
These are the same building blocks Titan once relied on to scale up: more stores, bigger tickets, higher-margin products, broader geography.
The debt elephant in the showroom
Here’s where the comparison tilts. Titan’s financials are solid with net cash balance sheet, high return on capital and double-digit margins. Senco’s is still a work-in-progress, with a balance sheet that looks stretched.
Debt-to-equity stands near 0.9x, high for a retailer. Titan is effectively debt-free.
Then there is working capital strain. Inventory has ballooned from Rs 449 crore in FY21 to Rs 1,172 crore in FY24. Surging gold prices in FY25 inflated this further by roughly Rs 500 crore. Titan turns inventory far faster, freeing up cash for growth.
On cash flows, FY25 saw an operating cash outflow of about Rs 30 crore, better than the Rs 294 crore outflow in FY24, but still negative. Titan’s cash conversion stays consistently positive.
Even with a decent interest coverage ratio (~3.5), higher working-capital borrowings and interest costs weigh on Senco’s margins.
And while the Rs 450-crore QIP in FY25 gave breathing room, debt was partly repaid, liquidity improved, the structural issue remains. If inventory discipline doesn’t improve, debt can creep back up.
Margins: the other big gap
Titan’s jewellery EBIT (Earnings before interest and tax) margin hovers around 12%. Senco’s adjusted EBITDA margin in FY25 was around 5–6%, down from its guidance of 7–8%. Adjusted PAT margin halved year-on-year to roughly 2.6%.
Some of this is cyclical, as customs duty cuts, product mix shifts, and gold price inflation all played a role.
But the long-term challenge is structural: without a higher studded mix, stronger brand premium and better scale economies, closing the gap with Titan will be tough.
Execution speed: blessing or risk?
The temptation for a midcap challenger is to go all in. This usually involves opening more stores, entering more cities and launching more categories. Senco is clearly in this mode.
But Titan’s rise wasn’t just about speed; it was about sequencing. It took years to build trust in each market, to fine-tune supply chains, to train store staff to deliver a consistent brand promise.
Going too fast risks stretching management bandwidth, growing debt, and diluting service quality. Which is riskier than other retailing businesses in a high-gold-price environment that can dampen consumer demand.
Sentiment sensitivity
Senco’s shares have also shown they’re more sentiment-sensitive than Titan’s. In late 2024, rumours of a regulatory raid, later denied by the company, sent the stock tumbling.
No wrongdoing was found, but it underscored how quickly perception can shift for a smaller player without Titan’s institutional shareholder base and brand moat.
The road ahead
For Senco to earn the Titan comparison in more than just growth rate, it needs to keep debt low post-QIP, improve inventory turns, and make cash flows consistently positive.
The company needs to be push studded share higher, premiumise product mix, and command a stronger brand premium outside the East.
And grow in non-East markets without overextending.
The opportunity is real. The organised jewellery share is still growing, younger consumers value hallmarking and transparency, and regional brands can go national faster thanks to franchise models and digital marketing.
But the risk is also real. Without tighter capital discipline, the debt issue could overshadow the growth story. In jewellery retail, scale without margins is just a bigger hamster wheel.
Verdict: Aspirant, not yet peer
Senco has the heritage, the growth ambition, and early signs of execution to make the Titan comparison worth discussing. Its East India fortress, improving studded mix, and non-East momentum are in the right direction.
But until it can match Titan’s discipline on margins, debt, and cash flow, it remains an aspirant rather than a peer. If it can pull off the balancing act — grow fast without financial strain — then maybe, a decade from now, we’ll look back and say: Senco didn’t just try to be Titan. It became one.
Disclaimer
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Manvi Aggarwal has been tracking the stock markets for nearly two decades. She spent about eight years as a financial analyst at a value-style fund, managing money for international investors. That’s where she honed her expertise in deep-dive research, looking beyond the obvious to spot value where others didn’t. Now, she brings that same sharp eye to uncovering overlooked and misunderstood investment opportunities in Indian equities. As a columnist for LiveMint and Equitymaster, she breaks down complex financial trends into actionable insights for investors.
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