Platinum Guild International Finds A Golden Opportunity For The Precious Metal In The Indian Markets
Gold, Silver, and Diamond have all been the most accepted forms of jewellery in Indian traditions. Platinum although has been creating new opportunities for the jewellery industry along with providing a new set of choices to accessorize consumers.
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Huw Daniels, CEO, Platinum Guild International talks about a huge opportunity for platinum in the Indian markets. Pricing it more than gold, they wish to see it creates new trends and occasions in the country. With a strong hold in the offline market, PGI targets online retail taking advantage of data penetration and reaching out to tier 1,2,3 and 4 cities. With the intent of creating new opportunities for the mining industry, PGI delves further into a high growth potential market such as India.
Globally, till where does Platinum Guild International have its reach and what are the important markets for you?
We operate in 4 markets including our lead market which is China in terms of size. Followed by Japan, the United States of America and India which is our fourth market. We also focused in Europe but shifted all our assets and distributed them across our other existing and new markets since 5 years ago. Where the demographics of growth, return on investment and consumer profile have been more favourable. We measure our success with regards to the ounces sold in the fabrication of platinum jewellery. We recorded the units and the Asian continent which consumes 80% and India’s contribution is small but it still remains the most important strategic market. We’re more interested in the growth potential where the growth statistics point heavily towards the country growing at double digits touching 30%. We’re looking at a business of 500,000 ounces in the next 2-3 years. Our dollar per ounce investment is greater than any other market than India.
How would you Indianize the platinum trend in the country and make it more consumer friendly in terms of jewellery preference?
India is always going to predominantly be a gold market and there’s no doubt about that because it is the most sophisticated jewellery culture in the world. Our vision for platinum is to bring in a different kind of a jewellery experience for the consumers here and bring an incremental opportunity in the industry. That is where we have built the business in India and our approach is not to mimic trends followed by other precious metals here. It is about creating new markets and with platinum we created a whole new category around love changing the way Indians look at that particular segment. Platinum needed to have a role in the wedding occasions in the country and we created an occasion of blessing from the mother and the father to their daughter and the bridegroom.
While covering 4 major markets, how has the journey been for PGI in India?
We opened in India during 2001 and we always possessed platinum differently to gold along with launching our pilot test program in the market in Chennai. This led to our national program in 2009 and we’ve had a 10-year long journey where the business has grown in double digits. The only year we faced a challenge in 2016 during demonetization but other than that we’ve only grown and we focused on the immediate jewellery stores that give us our market reach. The platinum industry only covers 25% in the overall industry. We are spread across many cities worldwide and in India, our reach has been strong in Bengaluru, Kochi, Mumbai, Nashik, Hyderabad, Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Surat, Indore, Kolkata and many more. This product is a tier 2,3 and 4 opportunity too and we’re finding young consumers through the smartphone, data penetration and educated taste reaching out to us.
With a huge growth potential for platinum in India, where would PGI stand in the jewellery industry in the near future?
Our mandate comes from the mining companies in South Africa and it is very clear that PGI needs to continue our mission of bringing in productive opportunity. We aim to continue to find ways for platinum to enter different markets and we do that by working very closely by working with manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. Strategically we are heading towards a three-pronged approach. In India, there is a market-making role and through our efforts, we are sensitizing the consumers towards the value of platinum and make it meaningful to them. We do come at a higher price point than other jewelleries.