Do you know how the most precious Jewells, Gems, Diamonds, Rubies and costliest metals like Gold, Silver, Chrome, and Platinum are hiding beneath the earth’s crest?
Ancient people believed that these are the timeless seeds of our galaxy’s brightest, ever-glowing, starry Sun God, who sowed them into the planet earth to be found by the future generations of Sun God worshippers.
According to these Sun God-worshipping ancestors, the deity also set the rules for the finders. Every generation must work hard, earn their treasure with ethics, ingenuity, and innovation, and upgrade their material and mental wealth by changing old things and constantly adding something anew. That is the only way to keep the deriving value from this treasure of Jewells’ timeless wisdom.
Innately knowing this automatically without being told, as if the story was transmitted to his unconscious mind by birth, Mehul Oswal, the fourth generational treasurer and Director of Mahendra Jewellers from Kolhapur began his entrepreneurial journey from the bottom instead of from atop, as is the case with ninety-nine per cent others.
Inherent Legacy of Values and Principles
Mehul conveys, “We have a legacy of 117 years in the jewellery industry. Our great grandfather was one pioneer in expanding the jewellery business in Kolhapur. So, I am the fourth generation in the jewellery business. The inspiration was always in my blood from my childhood days.” True to his inherent legacy, Mehul used to visit the store and observe everything keenly from his childhood days, he used to go to the showroom in summer vacation.
And though from that young age, Mehul realized that he was born with a golden spoon in his mouth, later on, when he began his own ascent, he did it by keeping that golden spoon out of his mouth.
Mehul shares, “I knew we as a family are sitting on a legendary treasure grown into this brand of Mahendra Jewellers by my great grandfather, grandfather, my father, and uncles, including our traditional exports as well. However, I began my learning from the basics. First thing, I noticed that our brand has excellent potential. We have the legacy of the brand name. So, as a new generation, I felt I should do something, bring in some change, some upgrade like creativity, innovation or new trends, anything.”
Thus, after completing his education in 2009, Mehul joined the family business, not as an owner but as a lowly salesman. He began attending to clients coming to his jewellery showroom. And he kept interacting with his sales team and his clients to learn about the process and expectations of customers. And he began his research and analysis that what was Mahendra Jewellers’ potential as a brand in the Kolhapur city? What was the buying potential of the people of the city? And what difference he could make?
For example, the brand name of Mahendra Jewellers was well known for its antique golden, temple, and Kundan jewellery. Mehul says, “This has been our strength like customization of these types of traditional jewellery, but not Diamonds. The diamond section was a very small portion of our showroom. So I focused on Diamonds.”
The Kohinoor of Kolhapur
Mehul decided to find out the reasons behind this factor so that he could expand his Diamonds section. And he saw that even people from Kolhapur used to travel all over India to buy diamond jewellery. They used to go to metro cities like Puna, Mumbai, Delhi, or Bangalore but would not purchase it from Mahendra Jewellers; why? This made Mehul curious. And he decided to change this trend.
Mehul remembers, “To change the trend, I must know the trend. I must understand the market. Hence, I started visiting national shows like international jewellery shows in India. The top ten shows. After that, I visited the Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and Dubai shows. And I began grasping the nit-bits from the market, what was going on in the world. And how I can present this to the Kolhapur people. From the bottom-most point of view, That was my first lesson learned that be a humble learner, then only you will know what is going on.”
With the new learning came new strength, knowledge, and confidence to build a team that can showcase what this new generation can do to the Kolhapur city people. “And I knew our potential and strength, which the Kolhapur people trusted. Slowly, I started organizing three to four HNI special exhibitions every year, where we welcomed people to participate in any of the special outdoor exhibitions. There I used to present new and trending jewellery. And I focused on diamonds. For us, the diamond was a big task in Kolhapur. The old mindset was diamonds won’t go well in Kolhapur. Don’t take interest. That was the senior’s mindset. Uncle used to say, “Kolhapur and diamonds won’t go.” But I had complete confidence in the Kolhapur people. What’s the potential of Kolhapur? I know these people go out of Kolhapur to buy not only diamonds but imported cars and diamond jewellery too. And Kolhapur has the records of buying these things.”
The Golden Vision
Kolhapur’s per capita income, its ranking, area-wise, was first or second highest. Thus observed Mehul with his golden vision, and to change the age-old mindset, he combined advanced technology with jewellery exhibitions. He kept launching new exclusive diamond jewellery year after year in Kolhapur by inviting prime, VIP, and HNI clients, getting huge responses and grand success in 2015-16. Mehul showed his seniors the results on paper and convinced them to change their traditional mindset that diamond jewellery won’t go well in Kolhapur.
Mehul proclaims, “And today, I would like to say that the Mahendra Jewellers brand is known for its diamonds, along with its silver, gold, platinum, and other classic jewellery. Whenever the name diamond comes into clients’ minds, they think of Kolhapur and Mahendra Jewellers. We are becoming synonymous with Diamonds.”
Also, Mahendra Jewellers are getting popular because of their speciality of customization like diamond iPhones, branded diamond watches, and diamond ornaments. “I launched a diamond iPhone around 2015. It was a perfect publicity event. And we as a brand were recognized not only in Kolhapur but all around the globe.”
Although, again, convincing his seniors was not easy. However, Mehul, with a golden vision set on the future and Sun God’s story stirring in his unconscious mind, succeeded against all the odds and completely transformed the brand of Mahendra Jewellers by taking it to the next level.
In the League of Royals
Every year, Mehul kept launching such types of products, such as accessories, phones, watches, sunglasses, specs, gold specs, diamond specs, uncut jewellery, and Diamond Polki jewellery by specializing and customizing them. It took Mehul around five to seven years to turn around the diamond category with his experience, surveys, lot of travel where he kept attending other multiple shows. Mehul’s hard work, risk, and daring paid off, as people, including royal, prime and VIP families, who were going outside the city for a diamond or other jewellery began preferring Mahendra Jewellers. Thus Mahendra Jewellers became the family jeweller of the people of Kolhapur.
Yet, Mehul, keeping the Kolhapur’s royal background, culture and the blessing of Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj alive in his soul, is humble enough to attribute all of his success, each of his achievements to his ancestral legacy of fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers who treated their customers as Gods. Mehul expresses, “This is the ancient legacy of ethics, trust, quality control, craftsmanship, innovations, creativity, varieties, and different classes of design, and the warm relations with our peoples, customers and society. This is what we have in our blood, our spirit that we have to always work with ethics and innovation. This is our positive strength, our very backbone.”
Even today, after so much success and achievement Mehul never stops but keeps attending to all of his clients personally. And clients, too, have so much trust and bonding with Mehul that they take an appointment and call him whenever they wish to buy any kind of jewellery.
Mehul reflects, “People’s faith in us is our greatest achievement. Such achievement never comes from marketing gimmick, paid advertising, or fake show-off. Today, not only Kolhapur people but clients across the globe, whenever they land in India, they plan to visit Kolhapur and Mahendra Jewellers. So we have national as well as global recognition and presence.”
The Book of Raining Wisdom
Mehul’s advice for the budding aspirants who are willing to venture into the jewellery industry is a book of raining wisdom. “As per my past 12, 13 years’ experience in business, I would like to say that instead of relying on ancestral or family fortune, you must work hard on your own, be ethical in all your business dealings, and never stop learning. It is never late or enough to learn new things. You must have a learning attitude.”
“Never think that I have a good, big brand or a good backup. Time changes. It would help if you always upgraded with time, whether it is a designing part, technology, etc. You must adopt that change.”
“We have a strong presence over here, but with time, we always upgraded our showroom interior-wise, hospitality-wise, because it is the demand of time. We have to change. Keep on changing our business pattern.”
“If you don’t change with time, you will be outdated. In today’s competitive, one-touch access to everything, customers are smarter and do their own research before buying. They have impulses and abundant choices; however, they have an already fixed mindset of “I want to buy this. I want this jewellery. And I want to customize it this way.”
And to cope with them, you should know every info related to the industry you are in. You must know your industry in and out. You can not only rely on your father or ancestors’ earnings, fortune, and goodwill. If you don’t have enough education and practical knowledge, you will not succeed in the long run. So, always keep a learning attitude; whether you have 20 or 50 years of experience, learning should never stop.”
“Value the time. Value your team. And one more thing I must mention. Your health is important as well. It would help if you gave your time, like morning time, at least one hour or whatever you can give, to your mental health and physical fitness. If you are mentally and physically fit, you can do anything. You can work hard. You can work efficiently. After I wake up at around 6:00 AM, I give my morning time, one to two hours, to my physical fitness and mental health, whether it is yoga, gym, meditation, or spiritual thing. This is one thing many people forget to give time to their fitness. And at an early age struggles with anxiety, mental exhaustion and depression. So in the morning, please give one hour to yourself, your fitness. I am myself a fitness freak. For the last 15 to 18 years, I have been giving my morning time to myself. That is most important. The rest of the 18 hours working is yours. How you make it productive, that’s up to you.”
“That is how we became the first silver hallmarking license holder in India. And we are an ISO 9001 company. Also, we were the first one to get the hallmarking gold license in 2005, the first in Western Maharashtra. Moreover, I started authenticity like international lab certification for diamond jewellery. So, our jewellery is authentic internationally; the trend I started first in Maharashtra, Western Maharashtra. Authentic lab certification.”
These were the small steps which enhanced and boosted, and later all Mehul’s seniors trusted him and wholly handed over the reins of Mahendra Jewellers to him. They never interfered after that. Today, Mahendra Jewellers are the benchmark of quality assurance and hallmark of international authenticity.
Diamonds are Forever
Mehul envisions, “We plan to keep on expanding to serve better and best. Naturally, we are very aggressive in expansion. In the near future, we will add many greater number of stores. Even before COVID, we relaunched our flagship store where we had changed everything technology-wise, like the software, hardware, testing and designing lab. Right now, we are working in an entirely seamless environment.”
Even if the customer does not come to the showroom, everything is seamless, online, and secure with Mahendra Jewellers. The level of technology adopted by Mehul at his showroom is amazing. Everything, including quality assurance, authenticity, transparency, and all types of reports related to customers, including their feedback, is online.
“We have every team of HR, branch manager, floor managers, sales, customer service, CRM, etc. For the last seven years, I have been training our staff to focus on customer experience. We are maintaining a personal relationship with our customers. On their anniversaries and birthdays, we invite them over and celebrate with them. That is the way we want to grow together with our clients. This is our present and future focus. We will always be known for our ever-shining ethics and dazzling brilliance of transparency. That is our core belief at Mahendra Jewellers, Kolhapur,” concludes Mehul.
