Click to buy jewellery

It's old news that the e-mart is booming; what's new is the gilt edge it is acquiring. As buyers become more comfortable with the clickbuy-pay process, they have inched up the purchase ladder, from booking railway tickets or recharging prepaid mobile phones, to picking up more expensive items such as jewellery. While various branded jewellers have been selling their wares online for some years, a new segment is now emerging-online jewellers, who only sell via the Internet and have no retail stores. This means that they can cut down on high rental costs and operational expenses to offer hefty discounts to buyers . In fact, some of these online sellers claim to give discounts of up to 30% compared with the prices being offered in physical stores.

Most of these sites, such as Johareez (johareez.com) and JewelsNext (jewelsnext.com), sell across various categories, from silver anklets to diamond solitaires. However, some like CaratLane (caratlane.com), which sells only diamond jewellery, stick to one category. Rajiv Mehta, managing director of Surat Diamonds (suratdiamonds.com), says, "We have shipped our products to 45 countries and the demand is increasing . There is a wide spectrum of items and prices, ranging from 300 for fashion jewellery to 7 lakh in case of diamond sets."