Golden Touch

TS Kalyanaraman made a fortune selling wedding jewellery in India. Now, as the price of bullion booms, the founder of Kalyan Jewellers India faces the prospect of value-conscious customers amid an ambitious expansion push

- ANURADHA RAGHUNATHAN

On a bustling street in the southern city of Chennai on a weekday afternoon, Kalyan Jewellers India's 1,860-square-meter flagship store is buzzing with customers, from a couple in their 30s to Indian expats visiting from the US.

Attentive sales assistants offer to help them try on any piece that catches their eye from the wall-mounted rows of glittering gold necklaces and countertop displays of bangles, earrings and rings. The range starts from under $200 for simple gold rings going up to as much as $60,000 for elaborate wedding jewelry, some studded with diamonds, rubies and emeralds. Behind locked glass cases are even more ornate collections that run as high as $120,000.

In gold-obsessed India, where households collectively hold 34,600 tonnes of gold valued at nearly $3.8 trillion, according to Morgan Stanley estimates, Kalyan is the country's second-biggest listed jewellery retailer by sales. And the company has lately been on a hot streak.

The top line has more than doubled in the past five years to ₹250.5 billion ($2.9 billion) in the year ended in March, lifting after-tax profit fivefold to ₹7.1 billion. That was even before President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs on US imports sent the price of gold—a so-called safe-haven investment—soaring to a record $4,000 an ounce in early October. This, in turn, has pushed up the cost of jewellery, posing a challenge to retailers such as Kalyan to find ways to reduce the sticker shock faced by their customers.

Kalyan's billionaire founder and managing director TS Kalyanaraman isn't perturbed. “There’s no full stop to growth,” says the 78-year-old (net worth: $3.1 billion). He's seated in his office at corporate headquarters in Thrissur, a town in the southern Indian state of Kerala known for its temples as well as its gold artisans and traders.