The Mofussil Millenials

Akola is a town where very little has changed in the last decade. Organized chain stores have yet to open their retail store here. The nearest Tanishq store is located 200 KM away at Amravati.

Khandelwal Jewellers have two stores in the city and their flagship store has three floors. When I walk in to meet Harshal & Pratik, at 4 pm, the store is full of customers. Nitin Khandelwal ( Harshal’s father) is manning the cash counter. The cousins are busy getting ready for VIVAHA MAHOTSAV, an in store event scheduled to begin the next day.

Harshal after completing BBA honours (Bachelor of Business Administration) from Harriet Watts university?campuses in Dubai and Scotland formally joined the family business in July 2020.

?Pratik , Harshal’s cousin and ?son of Ravi Khandlwal (Nitin’s brother)?completed his schooling in Bangalore and later?went to Mumbai to study business management and Bcom at Indian School of Entrepreneurship and Management (ISME) . He now plans to go to London for higher studies in international business.

Both the cousins passionate as they are about their family’s jewellery business want to carry forward the 100 year legacy of Khandelwal Jewellers.

Harshal for instance chose his subjects carefully, and opted for the courses that would help him gain insights in the consumer retail business.

For his dissertation, he chose the Indian jewellery industry and interviewed 25 top jewelers.He?gathered deep insights on how the Indian jewellers approach customers, build consumer trust and long term??loyalty.?The insights gathered indeed proved to be very useful and led to launching a CRM initiative.?With tremendous zeal and active follow up, the cousins have been able to register 4400 customers within three months.

The consumers in turn have responded favorably by availing of the special festive offers designed for them.

During the Covid 19 lockdown, Harshal discovered the power of the digital medium. He narrated the following incident that was a precursor to the launch of a video calling mechanism in association with vendor manufacturers.

“In our most successful video calls, parents of the groom visited our store in Akola. While they enjoyed our hospitality, their son was in Nagpur and the bride to be was in California. All of us got connected to our manufacturer in Ahmedabad through video conferencing. We successfully concluded the sale of Rs.60 lakhs without really having physical inventory in our stock”. Said Harshal.

??Jewellers in small towns lack scale and reach as compared to their counterparts in metropolitan cities. They therefore have to pay a higher price when buying products and availing services from service providers.

The Khandelwals realized the power of collective bargaining that led to the conceptualization and launch of Premier Jewels of India (PJI). PJI strives to be a one stop solution provider for small jewelers.

It is an exclusive, subscription based program where the members get tangible benefits while buying inventory, availing services such as branding, social media, digital marketing from specialized agencies.

The launch ceremony took place in Nagpur and 18 jewellers have already signed up. Harshal and Ravi are planning road shows in important towns in Vidarbha and Marathwada in the first phase.

?A bulk of Khandelwal jewelers’ customers are middle class maharashtrians. Harshal and Pratik have launched light weight diamond jewellery to meet their aspirations. An annual event calendar is put into place to attract and motivate customers to visit their stores. Jeweller from De Beers Forevermark is also scheduled for a launch in early 2022.

Their expansion plans include opening stores in Buldana, Akot, Hingoli, Jalna and Nanded after the positive response to the satellite store in Washim launched in 2019.