Priyam­vada C, Mint
1 Dec 2025

A wave of investor cap­ital is flow­ing into India’s labor­at­ory-grown dia­mond (LGD) seg­ment, as fast­s­cal­ing brands tap rising con­sumer adop­tion in a mar­ket now worth well over $300 mil­lion. New-age brands have raised mul­tiple rounds of cap­ital on the back of grow­ing mar­ket share and improv­ing mar­gins.

Actor Shilpa Shetty-backed Lime­light, which is in talks to raise its second round of cap­ital this year, joins the grow­ing list of other small brands such as Onya, Giva, Jew­el­box, Lucira Jew­ellery and Aukera, among oth­ers, who have snagged mon­ies in recent months. Lime­light has appoin­ted Ambit Cap­ital to raise about $20 mil­lion to fund its expan­sion plans, two people famil­iar with the mat­ter said.

Con­firm­ing the fun­draise, the six year-old com­pany’s co-founder Pooja Madhavan said the funds will be used towards store expan­sion and brand build­ing as it looks to touch 100 stores over the next year. “We are in final talks with growth PE funds and reputed fam­ily offices (for the fun­draise),” she told Mint.

Other sim­ilar fun­draises include Onya’s ₹5.5 crore in a pre-seed round led by Zeropearl VC last week, Aukera’s $15 mil­lion raise led by Peak XV Part­ners and Aditya Birla Ven­tures-backed Giva raised ₹530 crore in an internal round led by Premji Invest, Epiq Cap­ital and Edel­weiss Dis­cov­ery Fund, as it looks to scale up its lab-grown dia­mond offer­ings.

Nine pure-play lab grown dia­mond star­tups col­lect­ively raised a record $26.4 mil­lion in 2025, com­pared with $4.7 mil­lion across eight star­tups last year, data from mar­ket intel­li­gence pro­vider Tracxn showed.

The devel­op­ment comes as India’s lab-grown dia­mond jew­ellery mar­ket, val­ued at about $300-350 mil­lion in 2024, expects to grow at a com­pound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15% over the next dec­ade, as per con­sultancy firm Red­seer’s estim­ates. As the mar­ket evolves, sev­eral prom­in­ent jew­ellery brands will gradu­ally pivot from exclus­ively nat­ural/mined dia­monds in favour of lab-grown altern­at­ives, along­side high-end jew­ellers incor­por­at­ing the lab-growns into their select col­lec­tions, which will drive sales volumes and act as an afford­able entry point for con­sumers.

This seg­ment has par­tic­u­larly picked pace in the last five years, with mil­len­ni­als and gen Z lead­ing this shift, driven by bet­ter value, trend­ier designs from new-age brands, and grow­ing com­fort with lab-grown dia­monds as a cer­ti­fied, high-qual­ity product. This cat­egory has also widened bey­ond occa­sional fash­ion to gift­ing, daily wear and increas­ingly bridal, reflect­ing sus­tained con­sumer con­fid­ence and a will­ing­ness to treat them as a main­stream jew­ellery option, Rohan Agar­wal, part­ner at Red­seer told Mint in an emailed state­ment.

He fur­ther added that new-age brands have stead­ily gained mar­ket share in the mid-ticket gift­ing and daily wear seg­ment with many try­ing to push into premium ranges. While the com­pet­it­ive land­scape is still evolving, incum­bents have already star­ted respond­ing by launch­ing LGD lines of their own, although the extent to which they can chal­lenge remains to be seen.

Major Indian brands that are con­sid­er­ing a foray into this cat­egory include Malabar Gold & Dia­monds, Senco Gold, which has launched the sub­brand Sennes and Tata’s Trent, which launched its brand Pome in West­side stores.

Devangshu Dutta, founder and chief exec­ut­ive officer at Delhi-based con­sult­ing firm Third Eye­sight, echoed the sen­ti­ment. He explained that new-age lab grown dia­mond play­ers are for­cing tra­di­tional jew­ellers to intro­duce LGD options or risk los­ing younger cus­tom­ers. “Not just pre­cious jew­ellery brands, even those that star­ted as fash­ion jew­ellery are expand­ing their range with LGD designs.”

“Down the road, there is poten­tially scope for con­sol­id­a­tion as investors tend to prefer a hand­ful of scaled plat­forms with strong brand recall and robust eco­nom­ics. So, as the cat­egory matures, there may be stra­tegic acquis­i­tions by large jew­ellery houses and cor­por­ates, as well as mer­gers among fun­ded star­tups,” he added.

Those star­tups that can com­bine in-house man­u­fac­tur­ing, design cap­ab­il­it­ies and data-driven retail expan­sion would be at an advant­age, Dutta said. “Key future growth areas for LGD star­tups include omni­chan­nel retail pres­ence within India, with off­line stores espe­cially in demand-dense loc­a­tions such as the met­ros and Tier 1 cit­ies, export mar­kets both with poten­tial cost advant­ages and brand expan­sion, and extend­ing into fash­ion jew­ellery, every­day wear, col­oured lab grown stones and even lux­ury col­lab­or­a­tions that pos­i­tion lab grown as aspir­a­tional rather than merely budget friendly.”

(Published in Mint)

Ananditha Anand, Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad Chronicle)
Hyderabad, 28 July 2025

Beauty is borrowing from the bakery. Be it glazed donut skin, popularised by Hailey Bieber, jam lips, or strawberry freckles – food related makeup looks, as well as cosmetic marketing trends have been at an all-time high. In June 2025, around 2 lakh users looked up latte makeup on the image-based social media platform, Pinterest.

The Novelty Value

According to social-media-influencer Yashvi Bhaia, these trends bring a sense of novelty to cosmetic products. “Take a look at one of the body washes called Whipped Lush. It feels exactly like whipped cream – fluffy, foamy and sweet. This visual being attached to the product brings a pleasant connection,” she says.

Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, a management consulting firm, says, “Terms like choco mousse blush or berry lip tint evokes indulgence, comfort, and a sense of reward, transforming cosmetics into emotional experiences rather than just functional items.” Dutta likened these products to comforting treats, exuding warmth and a nostalgia for food they have consumed before, bottled in these makeup products.

Dhanashree Kavitkar is an avid follower of makeup trends on platforms like Instagram, as well as Chinese sites like Douyin and Red Note. She observes that the melding of the sensory elements of food and makeup “satisfied” the consumer.

“It works almost the same way ASMR does. When I think of jelly lips, I think edible, with a plump and glossy texture. And it just hits the right spot in my brain,” she says.

She also believes that many of these beauty trends, under the guise of novelty, are repackaging pre-existing makeup trends to make it appealing again. “Take strawberry freckle makeup for example, it is literally just drawing freckles on your face, but they gave it a new name to intrigue people,” she says.

Bina Punjani, owner of Bina Punjani Hair Studio says, “These are all marketing buzz-words created by online makeup companies, who wish to advertise to a younger audience.” She explains that food related nomenclature has existed forever in the realm of hair care products, with wines, chocolates, and caramels dominating the hair colour market.

“Sensory feelings have been a huge part of marketing and communication, be it on television, or anywhere else,” said Bhaia. “Now that marketing is so video-forward online, brands will create visuals associated with food,” she says.

Dutta adds that rather than a new concept, the increased intensity and consistency of these beauty brands employing food-related marketing on social media platforms differentiate it from their marketing in the 1980s – when it was first popularised.

Cultural Adaptation

Talking about the virality aspect of these makeup trends, Kavitkar points out how the looks trending in India (and around the world right now), were popular in East Asian countries like China and South Korea a year ago.

“Thanks to the matcha wave now, strawberry matcha makeup is popular. More East Asian food items like mochi and tanghulu have also picked up steam in the makeup space, and have gotten popular globally. But they can feel a bit alien to Indian consumers who don’t know these trends beforehand,” she says. Bhaia talks about how Indian cosmetic products adapted these trends to cater to the Indian “taste.” A leading brand has come up with lip products named masala chai, and jalebi glaze.

“These are such Indian terms, and they’ve been marketed so well. When you think of jalebi, you think of this shiny, orange-ish kind of thing, and you have a very clear visual of it.”

Just Another Trend

What keeps the novelty of these trends alive? Punjani thinks that it is the familiarity that we as humans draw towards nature and ourselves. “Suppose you look at your skin tone, and you see that exact shade in a pear – you end up drawing a psychological connection between the two,” she says.

Kavitkar thinks that they bring in a new wave of experimentation. She says, “Look at tangerine dream makeup. It is a mix of yellow and orange blush on your face, which looks so weird. If you saw someone wearing yellow blush outside, you’d be like, what the hell is she wearing? But that’s the beauty of this look, it’s so out of the box.”

Dutta notes that the frequency of usage of any imagery in the industry ebbs and flows with fashions. “Food, however, consistently provides an intuitive, emotional, and relatable entry point for consumers to engage with beauty, and will remain a versatile tool for building stories around pleasure, nostalgia, authenticity, and self-care,” he says.

While the world goes ‘bananas’ over ‘latte makeup’ and ‘gingerbread nails’ you can try the silent power of ‘smokey eyes’ and nude lips!

(Published in Deccan Chronicle)

Differentiation is the key to surviving and thriving in tough times. In the lifestyle products sector (apparel, footwear, home, etc.) a big difference is the product design itself.

More than ever, it is vital for Indian companies – brands, suppliers as well as retailers – to develop their own design and product development team, in the shortest time. The team, including designers, merchandisers, buyers, sourcing people, textile and apparel manufacturers – must sharpen their skills in reading the market trends and in developing new products that can make their brands or retail stores stand apart in the customer’s eyes.

To share its insights and experience, Third Eyesight is organizing an intensive workshop on Product Development and Forecasting (with an insight on Trends for Autumn/Winter 2009/2010). Click to REGISTER NOW.

The workshop will draw upon live experiences from the area of product development in the lifestyle and fashion sector, and will cover:

• Knowing the business planning process that provides the framework for development of apparel/lifestyle products
• Understanding lifestyle product line planning to retain the novelty of fashion merchandise
• Exploring concepts within the creative process such as the elements and principles of fashion design
• The process of product development in the fashion industry through an understanding of the international forecasting processes
• Using trend and color forecasting to initiate style ideas: with a special focus on the A/W 2009/2010 forecast from international sources such as the Premiere Vision Paris

Past workshops have included top / senior managers from companies such as:

• Benetton
• Levi Strauss
• Reliance
• Aditya Birla Retail
• Tarun Tahiliani Design
• Trent (Tata)
• Arvind Brands
• ColorPlus
• Etam
• ITC
• USI
• Numero Uno 
• …and several others.

Discounted delegate fees start at just over Rs. 9,000.