Jewellery start-up BlueStone.com revamps top decks

Ratan Tata-backed online jewellery start-up BlueStone.com has revamped its top deck with five new hires, which will propel it towards a revenue run rate of ₹250 crore by March 2016 from ₹100 crore achieved last fiscal.

Over the last three months, newly created roles of Chief Operating Officer and General Manager – Premium Strategy have been filled and replacements hired for key exits in Marketing, Merchandising, Customer Services and Sales. And the search is on for a Chief Technology Officer and Head of Products.

Former CEO of TaxiForSure Arvind Singhal joined BlueStone as COO; Marina Raj, who brings 14 years of experience in marketing and strategy for key luxury brands like De Beers and Chanel has been appointed GM of Premium Strategy. Pushkar Jain, former brand marketing head of Tata Teleservices, joined as CMO, replacing Srinivas S. Aakrosh Sharma, replaced Shipra Jain as Vice-President of Merchandising; followed by Imthiaz Ahmed who joined as Vice-President Sales and Customer Support last month, replacing Karishma Athavia.

Consultative selling service Confirming the developments, Arvind Singhal, COO, BlueStone.com, said: “The top management team has been strengthened to take the business forward and we are looking to close this fiscal with a revenue run rate of ₹250 crore. Other factors that will lead growth for BlueStone is the addition of 500 new designs every month; increased spend on brand building/awareness campaigns and our Home Try On (HTO) consultative selling service that has been ramped up.”

BlueStone is launching two new collections this month – Mughal collection and Snowflakes collection. The HTO service, which was introduced last April in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi has been expanded to 16 cities and receives over 500 requests a day. Prototypes of fast moving jewellery designs on BlueStone are made out of an alloy that closely resembles the look and feel of gold and sent to customer homes for trials on request, along with an expert who assists customers and also takes orders.

“We have 4,000 jewellery designs in 12,000 SKUs. The demand for HTO is so high that we are unable to meet nearly 20 per cent of requests. Overall, we do 5,000 transactions a month where the average selling price is between ₹20,000 and ₹25,000. However, we are aiming for a sweet spot of ₹35,000” said Singhal.

Pointing out that the $50-billion domestic jewellery market is growing 14 per cent year-on-year, of which, the online jewellery market is just 0.3 per cent compared to the US and China where online jewellery sales is six-seven per cent, Singhal said “Although we have captured over 50 per cent of the online jewellery market, there is tremendous headroom to grow.”