How this hip-hop-loving teen built a jewellery brand that even celebrities wear

Raghav Goyal, 18, from Jaipur plans to take his jewellery brand, Zillionaire, global. (Image posted on LinkedIn by Arjun Vaidya)

An 18-year-old from Jaipur has turned his love for hip-hop jewellery into a lucrative business which he plans to take global. The teen, Raghav Goyal, built a direct-to-consumer (DTC) jewellery brand called Zillionaire in 2020, while he was still in school.

Goyal’s story was shared on LinkedIn by Arjun Vaidya, who is the founder of online Ayurveda brand Dr Vaidya’s. Vaidya also mentors DTC brands.

Vaidya set up a meeting with the young entrepreneur last week. The latter came fully-prepared.

“Raghav reached the meeting 15 minutes early -- he didn’t waste a minute,” Vaidya said in a LinkedIn post. “By the time I entered the conference room, you can see the board was already full with notes. The table was laden with his products in open boxes. He’s definitely one of the most prepared founders I have met.”

Goyal started off by telling him the story behind his business. In 2020, during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, he developed an interest in hip-hop music. The teen wanted to buy jewellery that he saw on artists but discovered that such pieces were not available in India.

Then, he set out to find a solution. “He (Goyal) spoke to one of his friends in school whose family was in the jewellery business,” Vaidya added. “They teamed up and started Zillionaire!”

Zillionaire sells a variety of pieces: bracelets, necklaces, pendants and rings. The brand says that it integrates the craftsmanship of traditional jewellery with urban culture and arts. Celebrities like filmmaker Karan Johar and actor Malaika Arora have been seen wearing their pieces.

“The brand was occupying a gap in the market and so instantly picked up,” Vaidya said. “They only sell on their website but started getting sales from all over India and the world.”

Goyal’s brand is earning more than Rs 20 lakh per month. “He’s 18, identified a problem and online gave him the power to build a brand out of it,” Vaidya added. “We keep saying ‘Decade of D2C’ but stories like this reiterate the potential of what we have.”

The teenager plans to go to New York to study product design next year. “This is not just an India vision, we will take this brand global,” Goyal told Vaidya at the meeting. “Why can’t we reach 2 crore per month?”

Vaidya said he meets many DTC founders but his conversation with Goyal “really hit home” and left him inspired.