GIVA plans to use the capital for inventory management and expand its offline presence in India
Excluding the current fundraising, GIVA secured over INR 130 Cr equity funding to date
The startup claims to have more than 2 Lakh people visiting its website on a daily basis
D2C silver jewelery startup GIVA has raised INR 40 Cr ($4.8 Mn) in debt funding from venture debt firm Alteria Capital.
GIVA plans to use the capital for inventory management and expanding its offline presence in India, Ishendra Agarwal, cofounder of GIVA, told Inc42.
Excluding the current fundraising, GIVA secured over INR 130 Cr equity funding to date.
Agarwal, Nikita Prasa and Sachin Shetty, founded GIVA in 2019, with the aim to help women buy budget-friendly fine jewelery within a price range of INR 1000 to INR 20,000.
“All fine jewelery brands in India including CaratLane, Melorra, Tanishq and BlueStone sell jewelery starting from 20K-25K. However, GIVA offers jewelery for their day-to-day wear, offices and other occasions between 1K and 20K,” said Agarwal.
GIVA sells silver, oxidised silver, gold-coated and rose gold-coated jewelery to consumers across India, via its website, retail outlets and ecommerce marketplaces. The startup mainly targets women between the age group of 24 and 45 years.
Explaining the jewelery-making process, Agarwal said that GIVA’s in-house team and a community of influencers create jewelery designs, which are shared with third-party manufacturers. After receiving these jewelries from manufacturers, the startup carries out quality checks to ensure the purity of the metal, correct stone placement, tarnishing and scratching.
The startup claims to be selling 92.5% silver jewelery to consumers and offering a six-month warranty on jewelery breakage.
GIVA counts Aditya Birla Group, India Quotient, Sixth Sense Ventures, A91 Ventures, Founder Bank Capital, Anicut Angel Fund, founders of ShareChat and First Check as its backers.
Betting On Influencer Marketing
To market products and build customers’ trust, GIVA mostly creates influencer marketing campaigns, where influencers write and post about its jewelery. It also utilizes performance marketing on Facebook and Google to attract consumers towards the brand.
“We do a lot of influencer campaigns, where 4K+ influencers post about GIVA, write about the brand and collect feedback about it on a monthly basis. We have also partnered with mega influencers who endorse our brand,” Agarwal shared.
Plus, the Bengaluru-based startup has roped in Anushka Sharma and Shruti Hassan as brand ambassadors.
Sharing its pricing model, Agarwal said that a large part of the product costing includes manufacturing expenses and the cost of silver metal. Besides this, the profit margin is another element that was assessed before setting a marked or list price.
In essence, a marked price is what we see on a product while buying.
The startup said it earns 90% of its revenue from online channels and the remaining 10% from offline channels. It asserts that it witnessed more than 100% revenue growth in the current fiscal year (FY22).
Furthermore, it claims to have over 2 Lakh users visiting its website on a daily basis and enjoys more than 1.2 Mn customer base.
It also operates more than 40 exclusive brand outlets across the country and further aims to launch 100 odd retail outlets in Tier-II and Tier-III Indian cities by FY23-24.
According to Maximize Market Research report, India’s gem and jewelery market was pegged at $25.30 Bn in 2020. The industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 21.35% by 2027. Some of the players operating in the country’s silver jewelery market include Melorra, STAC Fine Jewelry and Benaazir.
In the last year, jewelery brands–Melorra, BlueStone and Aulerth raised $16 Mn, $30 Mn and $1.1 Mn respectively.
