Diamonds Should Be Pure As Mother-Child Relations, Says Mrs Supriya- Founder Of Ketan Diamonds
It’s hard to be a diamond in the world of rhinestone, but Ketan Diamond has marvellously proved themselves to be the real identifier of diamond in the ongoing pace of life. They say women have an aesthetic way of looking out for jewelleries and that’s what Mrs. Supriya Sampath, CEO Ketan Diamonds have achieved. Ketan Diamonds was found in the year 2018, its an Online diamond portal with the reach of delivery across India, the offices are located in Mumbai and Bangalore, their journey is been “The talk of the town”. They actually believe in the mantra of 3P’s which are Pure, Perfect and Precious, they completely deal with Diamond jewellery, Gold jewellery and Gold coins. The most beneficial offer they have with them is the “Custom Design” which means one may go for the Custom jewellery option and make it according to their taste and style. Not disclosing much about the Glittering world, let’s just have a glimpse of the chit-chat with the Founder.
1. What is the source of inspiration behind the name of your venture, Ketan Diamonds?
As you know, a mother and son’s relationship is pure, unconditional, heartfelt and highly strong and those are the values I look for in a diamond. I wanted my brand name to reflect that purity and strength. Therefore, the inspiration behind our venture’s name came from my son’s name – Ketan, which stands for ultimate purity.
2. Who all are your target audience/clients?
All those who like wearing jewellery or are interested in buying silver, gold and diamonds are my target audience. Also, we are targeting corporates who have royalty programs and are into corporate gifting. We are targeting B2C companies.
3. Your current operations are located in which regions and Where are you based at (city, state, country)?
We have presence across the country in terms of delivery. Currently we have operations in Bangalore and Mumbai.
4. What problems does your venture resolve? What are your products or services?
Our venture resolves the struggle of buying good quality, unique and hi-end diamond jewellery by offering wide range of designer and customised jewellery at an affordable price along with EMI option. We offer nearly 2,500 designs of gold and diamond jewellery at our website.In terms of services we provide old jewellery exchange as well as jewellery cleaning service at door step.
5. Would you like to Share the idea or story behind the foundation of Ketan Diamonds?
Story behind the foundation – Mrs. Supriya Sampath is the visionary women behind Ketan Diamonds. At a tender age of 20 she got married to Mr. Sampath Raj and started her family life. She started assisting her husband in their jewellery store, considering her immense interest in diamonds and her eye for identifying good designs they added diamond vertical into their business. She helmed this vertical by bringing in latest as well ethnic designs and putting together a unique collection of diamond jewellery. It was liked and appreciated by many of their customers and sale of diamond jewellery started soaring.
Supriya’s love for diamonds gradually turned into her passion and she started learning and reading more and more to increase her knowledge about diamonds and finally she mastered the 4’C of diamond.
However, over a period time she noticed that many diamond merchants were taking undue advantage of customer’s ignorance by selling them low quality diamonds for a higher price.
She felt transparency in the business was much required and authentication certificates should be provided for every diamond purchased. Also, she started educating and spreading awareness about quality and pricing of diamonds amongst customers.
After over a decade of work in diamond business, she felt its important to keep pace with the changing times and brought up the idea of starting an e-commerce jewellery store to cater to the internet savvy jewellery buyers of today’s digital era. She wanted to provide a platform to people to buy diamond jewellery with trust and also help them by sharing her knowledge and experiences. This was the idea and story behind the formation of “Ketan Diamonds” was formed.
6. Do you face any rivalry and how do you differentiate yourself from them?
Definitely we do have many competitors in the industry and many of them have been early entrants in the market. However, we clearly have a major differentiating factor, that is our pricing and our buy back policy which is far better and transparent from others in the industry.
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7. How do you identify your co-founder? Would you like to tell us something about them?
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My co-founder is my husband and he is the best partner I could get professionally as well personally. He is a veteran himself, he has been in the jewellery industry for over 15 years. We both are passionate about jewellery market and want to expand our reach to customers all over the country.
8. What is your idea of team formulation? What type of qualities do you search for in your team?
We have a lateral work structure and we follow linear and organic way of team formulation. Our Idea of Team formulation is simple — firstly the candidate’s credentials has to be in alignment with our requirement. Secondly we evaluate candidate on 3 factor – Proactive, Passionate about their field and solution oriented personality.
9. What are your growth or expansion plans for the next 2 or 5 years?
Five years is bit too early to plan, we are working with targeted growth plans for next 2 years – We plan to create12 cities presence and add another 500 jewellery design to our collection. In terms of team size we will add 13 people more and our target turnover will increase from 25cr to 100cr.
10. Where do you see yourself 10 years down the line?
As mentioned earlier 10years is too long a period to think and plan. However, we have a vision which we are focusing on and are working towards to become the leading online jewellery store and to get top of the mind brand recall.
11. What are your short term goals?
As answered in earlier, have share the 2years growth plan.
12. Have you risen any funding yet? Are you looking for the same?
We have not yet raised any funding, currently we are functioning bootstrapped. Yes, we are looking for funding.
13. Please share your incubation days struggle issues while setting up this venture, and how did you resolve them?
We are still in incubation phase and we do have our share of struggle as the market is quite saturated and highly competitive in terms of pricing and fluctuating rates.
14. What was or has been the most challenging part of your journey? How do you overcome the same?
Most challenging part was to kick start the project, we looks easier as a concept on paper but when it comes to executing the concept practically, it gets quite difficult and once we start we have to keep up the momentum of growth. Also, finding the right resources is very challenging.
15. What is your idea of stress management?
At present stress is managed well, when I see good progress of work and achieving more and more growth.
16. What do you do to escape the work life in your leisure time?
My leisure time is when I spend quality time with my family and friends. I do voluntarily participate in a lot of programs for social causes.
17. Where would you like to escape to for a holiday?
I would love to go to Mauritius as I like beaches and peaceful places.
18. Whom do you consider your idol/role model or biggest motivator and why?
I idolised my father ever since childhood, I had seen him struggle and work hard to achieve his ambitions in life. After marriage I have been highly motivated and inspired by my father in law, as he has similar qualities as my father and he is very knowledgeable about the jewellery industry. He is a mentor for both, me and my husband.
19. What makes entrepreneurs different from service class professionals
Entrepreneurs are risk takers and are highly passionate about their work which keeps them detained and work harder. Another big quality every entrepreneur needs to possess or cultivate is patience.
20. Which part of your life would you like to rewrite if given a chance to restart with your career today?
Though I do not have regrets or complains on my mind, I believe everything happens for good. However, if given a choice the only part I would like to change is to have started this venture bit earlier, at least 5 years back.
21. How has being an entrepreneur affected your family & Social life?
It has been enriching experience being an entrepreneur, everyday there is a new learning.
It has not affected my family and social life as my family and friends do know how much I value them, they have been extremely supportive of my decision and encouraging me to do better work.
22. Is there anything, you’d like to say to our readers or upcoming entrepreneurs?
My advice to upcoming entrepreneurs will be to stay focused, be more optimistic and strive hard to achieve your goals.
23. Tell us something about your education & family background.
I hail from a jain family which was into hardware business from Kolar. I was brought up in a business family therefore, unknowingly had subconsciously imbibed a lot of business sense and secret trades to run a business. In terms of education I graduated in commerce stream that helped to understand the profit making statistics and improved my accountancy skill.
24. What is your USP or biggest strength that makes you stand apart from your competitors?
Our USP is our ‘Quality’ and ‘Pricing’
25. Why do you think start-ups are so vulnerable to the external business environment? What according to you are the threats to their stability?
Clearly there are many determinants of business success and growth even in very small businesses. Successful entrepreneurship is undoubtedly a complex phenomenon and both
Internal and external factors impact on business performance. There are so many factors like Consumer purchase behaviour, market trends, Suppliers, Banks, Government Support agencies, etc. However, the key threats are fierce price competition by competitors and attaining the trust from customers with constant brand building efforts.
26. Do you consider yourself successful and by what means do you measure success?
Not yet though we are on the road to success.
27. Please share your contact details’ as follows:
a. Complete name – Ketan Diamonds Pvt Ltd.
b. Phone Number — +91 8088222231
c. Email id & website of Your Business- https://ketandiamonds.com
d. Contact Person details – Deepak Sagar, VP – Sales & Operations.
