Tanishq to introduce light weight jewellery to attract customers as gold prices soar

With gold prices continuing its rise, Tata Group's jewellery brand Tanishq is planning to introduce light weight products to attract customers and is working on innovations to create same designs with lower weights.

As gold prices have jumped by nearly 60 per cent since April 2019, customers are looking to buy ornaments with lower weights within a particular budget, therefore, the company is working on reducing the weight of jewellery by 20-30 per cent, Ajoy Chawla, CEO, Jewellery Division, Titan Company, told reporters on Monday.

He was speaking at the virtual unveiling of company's festive collection 'Ekatvam'.

"So even if they (customers) may increase their budget by 10-20 per cent, we still need to bring down 20-30 per cent in our weight so that they can get equally desirable and beautiful products at those weights.

"So that's something which our design team and our manufacturing team and our vendor team have worked very closely," Chawla added.

The company is working on material innovations which will enable it to create the same designs with lower weights, he added.

"….we are also experimenting and we'll see how it goes...we have tried to look at some material innovations, which we hope to launch, as a pilot activity. Some of it will be in terms of a certain kind of alloy that we are using that enables us to create the same designs but at lower weights," Chawla said.

The company will also like to introduce few other material innovations going forward, he added.

In the domestic market, gold was quoting at Rs 50,275 per 10 grams on Monday as against a high of Rs 56,200 per 10 grams in August.

Chawla further said that due to volatility in gold prices, the demand for the yellow metal has gone up.

"There was a lot of volatility and that impacted demand because customers stayed back in quarter three. As they realised that the prices are here to stay, they came back...Even though gold prices have continuously risen... there was continued interest in gold.

"Now we think this is because of the uncertainty around and people expect gold prices to continue to rise, all the way to season and beyond. Therefore, they are buying," he said.

Besides, customers are also buying for future events like weddings and not only for festival season.

"...so they wanted to lock in, in a way, a certain gold rate by picking up some amount of gold. Some of it was done in the form of jewellery, some of it, and a large part of it also happened in the form of world bullion through buying gold coins," he added.

The company said its festive season collection 'Ekatvam' is a confluence of the country's finest art forms, intricately knitted into one.

There is integration of various regions across India featuring 15 different art forms, bound together as one masterpiece in each piece of jewellery, it added.