How to Start a Jewellery Business

India has tremendous appetite for gold and diamond jewellery - creating one of the largest markets in the world for jewellery. Further, India is the largest import of gold in India and the gems and jewellery sector contributes nearly 6-7% of the Indian GDP - making it a sector. With India having a booming middle class and growing economy, the demand for gold is set to further rise in the coming years. Therefore, the jewellery business holds a lot of promise in the coming years. In this article, we look at the procedure for starting a jewellery business in India.

Types of Jewellery Business

India's domestic gems and jewellery industry was estimated to have a market size of about Rs.251,000 crores in 2013 with the potential to grow to Rs.500,000 crores by 2018. The entire gems and jewellery industry is set to witness a very healthy Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CGAR) of about 15.95% making it very attractive for investments. The Indian Jewellery Business can be divided into different types as follows:

Retail Jewellery Shops
Online Jewellery Retail
Gold Trading
Gold Importers
Jewellery Manufacturers

In this article, we mainly look at the procedure for starting a retail jewellery shop in India.

Starting a Retail Jewellery Shop

India has over 2.5 million jewellery shops, around 450,000 goldsmiths and nearly 100,000 gold jewellers. Retail jewellery shops are very popular in India and research has shown that Indian consumers show less interest in buying brand jewellery as they rather prefer local ones more. Further, in India, nearly 96% of all Jewellery retail shops are family-owned small businesses making it an ideal sector for setting up a small business.

Business Registration

Jewellery businesses tend to have large turnover (Turnover in excess of Rs.1 crore) easily. Hence, it recommended that jewellery businesses be registered as a private limited company to enjoy the benefits of limited liability protection, easy transferability and more. Further, by incorporating a private limited company for the jewellery business, funds in the form of debt or equity can be easily raised.

Tax Registration

Sale of gems and jewellery are taxable under GST. Hence, all jewellery businesses must have a GST Registration from the local state tax department. Upon obtaining the GST registration the business owners can avoid penalties and collect GST tax.

Import Export Code

It requires an Import Export Code or IE Code for importing goods into India. However, jewellers must be aware of all the regulations prior to importing any gold into India. Learn about the procedure for importing gold into India.

BIS License for Selling Hallmark Jewellery

Hallmarking is the accurate determination and official recording of the proportionate content of precious metal in the article/jewellery. Hallmark is thus official mark used in many countries as a guarantee of purity or fineness of precious metal in jewellery/artefacts. The principal objectives of the Hallmarking Scheme are to protect the public against substandard, adulterated products and to obligate manufacturers to maintain declared purity standards of fineness.

A jeweller who wishes to sell hallmarked jewellery must obtain a license from BIS for the particular retail outlet. Each BIS license to sell hallmark jewellery is given for particular retail premises or sales outlet. Therefore, one company that has multiple outlets must obtain multiple BIS License to sell hallmark jewellery.

After the grant of a licence, the jeweller has to follow the terms and conditions mentioned in the agreement. In case of any deviations in the purity of precious metal (gold and/or silver) and observance of operations not in conformance to stated requirements may result in cancellation of the licence and proceedings for penalties.

To know more about starting a Jewellery Business, talk to an IndiaFilings Business Expert.