Bluestone eyes Rs 1,000 cr revenue by 2018

Jewellery portal BlueStone aims to quadruple its revenues to Rs 1,000 crore by 2018 as online buying in the ornaments category picks up pace in the country and the firm expands its international presence.

"People today are much more comfortable buying jewellery online. Transactions on our platform have been growing steadily and we are seeing about 5,500-7,000 orders per month.

Our annualised run rate in FY2015-16 stood at Rs 250 crore," BlueStone.com Chief Operating Officer Arvind Singhal told PTI.

The aim is to cross the Rs 1,000 crore milestone by 2018, he added.

Singhal said the Ratan Tata-backed company has introduced many services, including home try-on, to help ease customer concerns around online jewellery buying, which is a high-ticket item. Bluestone's platform features over 4,000 handcrafted designs.

The average ticket size ranges between Rs 22,000-24,000 and its biggest single order has been for Rs 8 lakh.

Interestingly, the company gets about 70 percent of its traffic from mobile devices.

"Mobile contributes for about 40-45 percent of the revenues and this is expected to grow to 65-70 percent of the business in two years," he said.

Bluestone, which raised Rs 100 crore funding in July last year, has investors like Accel Partners, IVY Capital, Dragoneer, Kalaari Capital and Saama Capital.

The company is also betting big on international markets.

"We deliver to 20,000 pin codes along with four international destinations - the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. International business contributes about 5 percent of our revenues and is growing," he said.

Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai contribute to about 60 percent of the company's business currently.

The jewellery market, which is primarily offline in India, is currently valued at USD 60 billion and is expected to touch USD 100-110 billion in next four to five years.

Online transactions are expected to reach 1-2 percent of this market by the same time.