Dhanteras: Gold, silver coins hot favourites in online space too

Priyanka SahayMoneycontrol

Sticking to the tradition, gold and silver coins, continue to rule the buying behaviour of the online shoppers, this Dhanteras.

“It is more a gesture and ritual than anything else that comes into play,” said Arvind Singhal, chief operating officer of online jewellery store Bluestone.

In an email response, a Snapdeal spokesperson said that given the demand, the company expects the gold and silver coins sales to grow 10-fold this year, compared to the previous Diwali.

Online jewellery shops, however, added that there was an increase in the demand for earnings, pendant and rings as well.

They claimed that the current average ticket size ranges between Rs 20,000-30,000, across different product categories.

Caratlane is betting big on its new jewellery collection that has been launched during the festive season. It has new styles on its platform such as “collection of earnings where the left and the right earnings have the same theme but are different from each other,” said Atul Sinha, Senior Vice-President of the company.

The company expects the number of orders spike three times, this year, as compared to the previous festive season.

Jewellery buying is however, a traditional phenomenon and given the large ticket size of the items, there are only limited takers for the same in online space. The segment is far from reaching its full potential.

The online jewellery market is expected to grow to USD 3.6 billion in the next three years.

Therefore, the companies are also trying to take measures to ensure that the customers who are not currently present online, they too get to know about the brand and shop.

Caratlane, which has five offline stores only in Delhi is expecting a good amount of business coming from these outlets.

Bluestone too has set up gold coin vending machines called gold ATMs, at malls across Bangalore and Delhi from where customers can purchase coins. Gold coins ranging between 1 to 20 gm are available at these vending machines. The price starts at Rs 3,200.

According to Singhal, this is to help customers who do not want to spend too much time at the jewellery shops for buying coins. He also said that since the machines have been recently set up, the transactions are not very high, but it is helping them get good customer traction.priyanka.sahay@network18online.com