When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the United States of America (USA) in June 2023, he gifted First Lady Jill Biden a 7.5 carat lab grown diamond from Surat, Gujarat, India. While the diamond worth $20,000 garnered the most attention, this was also the moment when the focus went to lab grown diamonds. Two years later, lab grown diamonds are still around and in fact, are attracting investor interest.
According to Mumbai based jeweller Rupesh Jain, the continuous price rises of gold and diamonds has made buying jewelry a costly affair for the normal man. “Jewelry is a form of celebration for every individual. With India’s per capita income still at a lower level, how do you really work with large number of people and make sure that you are fulfilling their jewelry needs,” says Rupesh Jain, founder, Lucira. So when lab grown diamonds gained popularity in the US, Jain researched the possibility of there being a similar trend in India.
So why have lab grown diamonds become so popular? According to Jain, two things have worked in its favor – that they are ethical products and low cost. Typically, ethical or sustainable products cost more. Take an analogy of the packaging industry – ecofriendly packaging typically costs at least 30-35 per cent more than normal packaging because of the cost of processing. However, in the case of lab grown diamonds, the cost of these ethically made diamonds are lower than the natural product. “Globally, everyone is talking about ethical products because natural resources are depleting day by day. So, ideally ethical is a big point,” says Jain. “It is a double win for our customers where they are very clearly selecting consciously, and they are getting exactly the same product as the natural diamonds though at a much lesser cost,” he adds.
People have been trying to create an artificial diamond for a while. According to the International Gem Society, the 1950s may have marked the start of the lab-grown diamond industry when the US conglomerate, General Electric (GE) made the first synthetic diamond in 1954. The method initially developed by GE was a high pressure / high temperature process (HPHT). Today, most lab-grown diamonds are made through a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD).
Although an incredible discovery, using such high-temperatures and pressures to produce these stones turned out to be too expensive to compete economically with natural diamonds. Over the years, the cost of the technology to make lab grown diamonds has reduced. According to a report quoted by the International Gem Society, the cost to produce a lab grown diamond in 2008 was $4,000 per stone. Now, it is down to $200-$300 per stone and falling every year as dozens of seed diamonds can undergo CVD at once.
A major turning point for the lab grown diamond sector came in 2007 when the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) officially recognised lab-grown diamonds by beginning to issue reports on them. Prior to this, lab-grown stones may have been submitted for analysis but were not officially graded or documented. In July 2019, following guidance from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the GIA updated its terminology on these reports to read “lab-grown” to avoid consumer confusion. Recently, in May 2025, the GIA said that it would not give the 4C certification to lab grown diamonds, but would still identify and evaluate them. This decision came from the fact that most lab grown diamonds fall within a narrow colour and clarity range, making the 4Cs grading system less relevant.
The buzz around lab grown diamonds started around 2021-22, but reached a high when PM Modi gifted the 7.5 carat lab-grown diamond to First Lady Jill Biden. The buzz around India is because India is the biggest hub for manufacturing lab grown diamonds. The last few years have been the game changer with a major mind set change among the customers over the last 24-36 months. “It is all about the narrative or the branding that has happened,” says Jain. “When lab grown diamonds were launched they were positioned as an alternative to natural diamonds, which was accepted by the customers. Also, the fact that the shine remains for years, is a factor that has moved the customer in that direction,” he adds.
Companies like Jewelbox, Lucira, True Diamond and a handful of other companies have entered the lab grown diamond space. In fact, De Beers had also started its own lab grown diamond brand Lightbox, in 2020. However, earlier this year, De Beers announced the closure of this brand with the aim of focusing on its natural diamond business. Jewelbox’s Vidita Kochar Jain came across the lab grown diamond category for the first time in 2021 when her then fiancée-now husband proposed to her with a lab grown diamond ring. “My husband told me that it was a lab grown diamond, and it came at a fraction of the cost of a natural diamond, but it was physically, chemically, optically exactly the same as the natural diamond. He also told me about its environment friendly aspect. So I felt good that I was wearing a conflict-free diamond; it was not a blood diamond,” says Vidita. It also struck her that the exact substitute of natural diamonds have existed in the market since 2008, but people did not know about it even in 2021.
Vidita and her brother, Nipun Kochar, found the lab grown diamond category to be an exciting one. They understood that only 4 per cent – 5 per cent of Indians today actually own natural diamond jewellery, as very few people in India find it affordable and practical. According to their research, the siblings found that in the US, the lab grown diamond market had grown from 1 per cent of the diamond market to 17 per cent in just four years. “We thought that with this huge shift in four years, and generally whatever happens in the developed economies is emulated in developing economies like ours, we thought this category definitely had potential,” says Vidita. Jewelbox was started in 2022 with one store in Kolkata and its website.
According to Vidita, Jewelbox has been one of the players at the forefront of the lab grown diamonds category. However, low category awareness and trust had to be built among the consumers, were the problems when the company started. Trust markers were put in place. A few tailwinds that came the company’s and the sector’s way helped. First, when people saw PM Narendra Modi gifting a lab grown diamond to Jill Biden, the category automatically gained authenticity. The second was when finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman defined the lab grown diamonds category in the 2023 budget, announcing subsidies for it, and giving a grant to IIT Chennai for research. These moves lent more authenticity to the sector.
The third factor that worked in favour of Jewelbox was when it participated on Shark Tank India Season 3 in 2024. “This was when many Indians became aware and got educated about this category,” says Vidita. “This was our ticket to gaining trust and credibility,” she adds. Jewelbox walked away from Shark Tank India with an Rs2 crore deal with investments from all the five Sharks. While before Shark Tank India, Jewelbox had two stores in Kolkata, post Shark Tank, the company’s omni channel strength came to the fore. According to Vidita, the company’s online orders went up 50x. Today 30 per cent of the company’s orders are online. More importantly, it was a ticket to Jewelbox’s pan India expansions as people now knew about the brand, so wherever they went – the brand now has 11 stores in nine cities – they got a ready base of customers from those who had already ordered from them online or who had seen them on Shark Tank.
Lucira’s Jain belongs to a Mumbai based family of traditional jewelers who own a traditional jewelry store, Rupesh Jewelers, in Mumbai’s western suburb of Malad. From 2013-2024, Jain handled the company’s branded jewelry business, Candere, which was then sold to Kalyan Jewelers. Post Candere, knowing that he wanted to remain in the jewelry space, Jain launched Lucira, a lab-grown diamond brand.
When Parin Shah and Darayus Mehta of Mumbai based lab-grown diamond company True Diamond met, they realized that this space was unlike the traditional jewelry business and hence the traditional business model was not going to be applicable going forward.
There are two segments of people that are buying lab grown diamonds. One segment are those who have already worn a lot of natural diamonds, and now want a larger assortment in their wardrobe. The second set of customers are those who have either worn zircons or not bought a diamond at all. These customers are buying smaller value stones to experiment with and later may upgrade to a higher value piece. “People want to buy that aspirational product, and India is a great market for that,” says Jain.
Today, in India and globally, though consumers are buying consciously, they don’t want to overspend. According to Jain, while the older generation wore the same designs for 10-15 years, the younger generation gets bored of designs very fast and crave a change every two years. The big benefit for lab grown kicks in for a larger stone. The price difference may be about 50 per cent, but as you go to a one carat solitaire the price difference becomes almost 90 per cent. “What we have seen particularly, is that though the average ticket value is not going down, it is the size of the diamond which is increasing. For natural diamonds also, at Candere, while the value of the solitaire was Rs60,000, the average size of the solitaire was 30 cents. On the other hand in Lucira, while the customer is spending Rs60,000, the size of the solitaire is 1.5-2 carats. That’s the difference we are seeing. People do not want to spend less. But if they get a larger piece for a reasonable price why not,” says Jain.
The online space has been the easiest way to reach customers. It is also a good platform to understand and gauge the interest of consumers. “A brick and mortar store is a necessity because jewelry as a space is something that people want to touch and experience,” says Vidita. “When you buy diamond or gold jewelry, you buy for a milestone, an achievement in life, for parents, for kids, during festivals, all emotional and sentimental purchases. People actually love the experience of walking into a store and having so much assortment to choose from, wearing it, it’s the whole experience. I think trying to change how people love to shop will be a mistake,” says Vidita.
Jewelbox has chosen to go the omni-channel way. The brand has a rich online repository and design bank with close to 4,000 SKUs online, adding 200 more each month. “We also have a recommendation system among other things in place so that the whole experience online is very seamless and convenient for customers,” says Vidita. Today, Jewelbox has 11 stores in nine cities. At the end of this financial year, the company is aiming to touch 30 stores with its new received capital. The company is currently looking at Rs50 crore of ARR. By the end of the financial year 2025-26, Jewelbox is aiming for an Rs150 crore ARR.
For True Diamond’s online sales, Mumbai is its largest market, followed by the National Capital Region and Bengaluru. “Tier 2 is a fairly large contribution for us with about 30 per cent – to 35 per cent of our sales,” says Mehta. After the Mumbai boutique, the company opened its first retail outlet in Gurugram. While Lucira has an online presence, it recently opened its first store in August.
With lab grown diamonds, as the brands have the price advantage, experimenting is not as expensive as it would be in the natural diamond world. There is a lot more innovation in the lab grown diamond sector than is possible with natural diamonds – there are octagon shape diamonds, or moon shape diamonds. Teddy bear shaped diamonds or a lion shaped diamond are cut out of single piece of diamond.
Jewelbox is exclusively making the Padma cut, a round diamond with 80 facets which allows you to see the flower like structure at the center of the diamond. (A normal round brilliant diamond has 57-58 facets.) As the diamond has more facets, there is more refraction, reflection, brilliance and fire in the stone, so visibly it looks like the diamond shines much more than a regular round brilliant cut. True Diamond has worked towards the Portuguese cut – a normal round diamond which has 57 facets. According to Mehta, no one really sells the Portuguese cut in India. Though True Diamond has tried other innovative cuts with the lab grown diamond such as a Batman shaped diamond, what has really worked for the company is the Portuguese cut. “We realised that to succeed in this space the only way is through innovation,” he says.
“So much innovation is happening in the lab grown world that it has pushed the boundaries of designing way beyond its limits,” says Vidita. “The whole approach has changed so much and maybe that is what is attracting investors. When you do it in a way that you want to build like a consumer brand and have mass loyalty in the country, then investors also see the scale,” she adds.
There has been a lot of investor interest in jewelry in the past with Candere – Kalyan Jewelers, Carat Lane – Tanishq, and for Blue Stone there is Info Edge Ventures, Peak XV, Steadview, Prosus, and Think Investments. Most recently, True Diamond received a seed round of $3 million from India Quotient, Huddle Ventures and others. Jewelbox raised its pre Series A round of $3.2 million with Blume as the lead investor. “Having missed the jewellery bus, many investors are wanting to bet on this category. Lab grown is the new space where they think they can make a mark,” says Jain.
So do the traditional family jewelers also want the lab grown diamonds in the market? “Demand is driven by the consumers,” says Jain. “So if the consumers are asking for lab grown diamonds, then the jewelers will have to start a separate brand for lab grown diamonds as it will otherwise cannibalize their own natural diamond brand. They do not have any option,” he adds. True Diamond’s Mehta agrees. “They are losing their own customers. As the demand for lab grown diamonds is high, you might as well keep your customer instead of losing him,” he says.
According to Vidita, while initially there was some resistance from family jewelers towards lab grown diamonds, but since the last three years many jewelers have started working with both natural and lab grown diamonds. “It’s only a matter of time before all brands and jewellers gravitate towards solving people’s needs. I have a very strong feeling that in time even legacy brands are going to get into this category,” she says. In fact, Kolkata based legacy jeweler Senco launched its lab grown diamond brand, Sennes in 2024.
Today, many of the third and fourth generation in family jewellery businesses are starting something in lab grown diamonds. They are also going out in the market and approaching venture capitalists, and building their brands in a way that their predecessor had not built their family jewelry brand. “Today I don’t think I would call our jewellery store, even when we had one store in Kolkata, a mom and pop store. We were building with a very big vision. We wanted to be a pan India player, we wanted scale, space and then we started working on other things like technology,” says Vidita. “There is so much technology to improve consumer experience. We have retention and loyalty programmes and innovative designs in jewellery,” she adds. Also, what has helped is that brand doesn’t have any predecessors or baggage of doing things a certain way.
The lab grown diamond space is a very nascent one in India. From just about three years ago, when there were not even five brands who were doing it in an organized way, today, the lab grown space is a heated one. “I want legacy players as well as other brands to come in because the pie is only getting larger. It will be such a massively penetrated market in India. Till the time more people come in, the credibility is going to be growing,” she adds.
According to Jain, as India is a country with the psychology of savings, he expects Indians to transcend towards lab grown diamonds soon enough. In a country with close to 5,000,000 weddings a year, and the numerous festivals, occasions and functions, each demanding different attires and different jewellery, why will people not buy lab grown diamonds? “There has to be a serious question now, why will people not buy lab grown diamonds,” he says.
Will natural diamonds be around, if everyone is going to gravitate towards lab grown? According to Vidita, the market is definitely going to be there. “I feel that from the current market there is going to be some spill over, especially from very utility driven and value seeking consumers who have been buying natural diamonds, who may get attracted to lab gown diamonds. In addition, the bigger opportunity I see is from people who have never actually been able to buy diamonds. That 90 per cent of Indians either couldn’t afford, or who thought that diamonds have not been a great asset class historically, can upgrade their gold with diamonds at a very small cost, is the bigger opportunity there,” says Vidita.