SHOPPING FOR JEWELLERY, especially for a wedding, is an emotional affair in India. Most brides prefer buying jewellery from their family jeweller. It’s no different for Kolkata’s Lahiri family, who have been buying jewellery from Senco Gold for three generations. Their daughter, Dola, is getting married in a few months, and on a Saturday evening the family of four is excitedly watching the bride-to-be try out the jeweller’s newly launched AI app. Called ‘Shape of You’, the app enables Dola to choose designs that complement her face structure.

The app recommends top-heavy silhouettes and upward-drawing designs since Dola has a narrow forehead and a broad jawline. The salesperson spoils her with choice of jewellery that would go with her face structure. As Dola tries out the jewellery, her mother Maitrayee, is teary-eyed. She tells the salesperson that it was from that very store in Gariahat that jewellery for her wedding trousseau was bought over three decades ago.

At the Senco Gold headquarters on AJC Bose Road in Kolkata, MD & CEO Suvankar Sen says his grandfather knew the names of all his customers, a trait which his father had also inherited. “But then we only had three stores; today, we have close to 200 and around 6 lakh customers. So, I am using technology to know their details.” Customers often walk up to Suvankar and his wife Joita (director and head of marketing) and tell them that they knew their father and grandfather. “Once a customer showed us bills dating back to my grandfather-in-law’s time. The lady said these were her mother’s bills. She then showed us her bills. On that day she was shopping for her daughter-in-law. That was the most priceless thing I have ever seen,” recalls Joita.

Senco Gold’s legacy dates to 1938, when Suvankar’s great-grandfather opened the first store in Dhaka’s Tanthi Bazaar. After Partition, the family made Kolkata (then Calcutta) their home and opened a store at Chitpore in the city. In 1960, the family separated and Suvankar’s grandfather inherited three stores — at Bowbazar, Gariahat and Shyambazar.

Suvankar’s late father, Shaankar Sen, took the business to ₹100 crore and six stores. When Suvankar entered the business in 2007, he set a goal of becoming a ₹1,000-crore business with stores across India. It achieved the target in 2012, with 16 stores. In FY26, Senco Gold clocked revenues of ₹8,430 crore and net profit of ₹574.32 crore. The company was listed in July 2023, and has seen its share price rise 44.78% on an absolute basis, translating into a CAGR of 11.87% through October 30, 2026.

It is one of a handful of jewellery brands whose inventory still consists of 60% handcrafted jewels; the couple claim they have also invested in technology. From men’s jewellery brand Aham, Gossip (silver and fashion jewellery), and Everlite (lightweight jewellery) to Sennes (lab-grown diamonds and accessories brand), Suvankar and Joita believe that Senco Gold’s biggest forte is its ability to innovate and stay in sync with evolving fashion needs.

“We introduced silver jewellery when no gold jeweller thought of selling silver in their stores. We are also the first to launch an exclusive brand for men. The same goes with lab-grown diamonds, too,” claims Joita. The family, across generations, adds Suvankar, has always tried to be ahead of the curve. “My father had started inscribing all 22-carat jewellery way before hallmarking was made mandatory by the government. He believed he had to give his customers value for their money. He also chose the franchise model of expansion. We were the first family-run jeweller to embrace the franchise model.”

He claims that Senco Gold was also among the first to digitalise its inventory as well as embrace Microsoft’s ERP system. “In fact, Bill Gates during a visit to India in 2016, had called out Senco for being one of the first family-run jewellery businesses to embrace ERP. Similarly, our inventory was digitalised way back in 1996.”

The Trust Factor

Senco founder Maran Chand Sen founded his business in 1938 with the profit he made from selling a Persian trader’s pearls. Maran Chand worked as a karigar (artisan) in a Dhaka jewellery shop, which was frequented by a Persian trader. Once, the trader forgot his bag of pearls at the shop, and Maran Chand kept it safe with him; when the trader made his subsequent visit over a year later, Maran Chand handed the bag over. Impressed by his honesty, the trader asked Maran Chand to sell the pearls, return his capital and keep the profit as reward. It was with this money that the business was founded.

Suvankar, a fourth generation descendant of Maran Chand, believes that honesty and their customers’ faith in the brand have been the cornerstones of the company’s growth journey. Vishal Sood, co-founder of BTH Capital agrees. Sood’s first interaction with Senco Gold was in 2014, when his earlier company, SAIF Partners, was looking to invest in the business. The private equity fund had evaluated a number of jewellery businesses and what had impressed them was Senco Gold’s franchise model. “It gave us the confidence that the family was highly trusted. The fact that outsiders were willing to invest a fortune to set up their stores spoke a lot about their governance standards,” says Sood. Of the 215 stores that Senco Gold had as on September 26, around 92 are operated by franchisees.

“When we approached Shaankarda (Suvankar’s father), he told us that though his books were clean, he preferred to get on board a consulting firm. He wanted his books to be audited before we came on board. So, he hired KPMG to do the audit,” Sood recalls.

Professionalising Senco

Before Suvankar joined the business, Senco Gold operated stores under various models — four were proprietorship businesses, one was privately held, and the other followed a partnership model. “Before I came in, my father merged all the stores and created one single company. He ensured that I inherited a professional entity,” he says.

The biggest challenge for most legacy family-run businesses is to let go of control and get on board professionals to steer the business. The 85-year-old business had karigars who had been with the family for decades. Even people who were at the corporate office had been family loyalists for years. But with private equity investment coming in, it was clear that the company had to professionalise its workforce.

They did hire a CFO and CHRO from outside but chose to upskill their existing workforce in the initial days. “When I joined the business in 2007, Senco Gold was 66 years old and there was of course a legacy that was being carried forward. But we knew that we had to think like a startup; we needed to have people do certain specialised things,” says Suvankar. He and Joita started identifying people who were good at certain tasks and trained them for it.

“We got two people with an accounts background to focus on payroll management. So, they became a part of the HR department. There were employees with good people management skills, so we trained them to become in-charge of recruitment. People who were creative, we gave them the responsibility of marketing. Gradually, we started looking for people who studied and came from that background,” says Suvankar.

Meanwhile, Joita partnered with local designers and NIFT students to bring in an element of modernity and fashion in the jewellery collection. It wasn’t easy. As the ‘bouma’ (daughter-in-law) of the Sen family, the karigars and the staff in general put her on a high pedestal, but to convince them to stay in tune with the times took her a while. “When I joined Suvankar’s business in 2008, I didn’t know anything about jewellery… I realised if I wanted to introduce new designs, I had to understand how the karigar makes it,” she says, adding that it was very challenging to change mindsets and introduce new thinking. “But once those collections started selling well and they were getting repeat orders, that’s when I also managed to establish my credibility,” she shares.

Innovation-first approach

If one walks into a Senco Gold store, the obvious thing that grabs attention is the gold filigree jewellery Bengal is known for. A closer look at the collection reveals the company’s focus on creating something for every section of consumers, cutting across age and spending power. The Sen couple is especially proud of their newest titanium-gold collection, which has helped in making the jewellery pocket-friendly. “I think we are the first jewellery brand in the country to have introduced a titanium-gold collection,” claims Joita. She then shows off her shell collection, which has tiny gold designs embossed on shells. The jewellery brand creates 10,000 designs a month and 500,000 every year.

Nandini Mehta, an executive at a Kolkata head-quartered FMCG company, says the reason she shops at Senco is because of its contemporary designs. “I recently bought a ring from there and I bought it only because it has a traditional Bengali look, yet it is contemporary,” she says.

With gold prices hitting the roof over the past year, volume growth has been impacted. To buck that trend, the focus on lightweight jewellery has been inordinately high. Rising gold prices, according to Joita, have posed an interesting design and product challenge for her karigars who are used to making jewellery in a certain way. “We are pushing them to make jewellery in a way that gold can be stretched to give a necklace, for instance, a fuller look. We have necklaces starting from 10 gm and you will not believe that they are [just] 10 gm. The fullness of how we can make our gold stretch is our USP,” she explains.

Joita says even at today’s gold prices, Senco can offer a bridal package (wedding rings, necklace, earrings, groom’s chain, bangles and finger rings) starting from ₹3 lakh. “That’s how we manage the market challenge of fluctuating commodity prices.” Senco Gold has also started making significant amount of jewellery in 14 carat and 9 carat gold.

The company grew by more than 50% in Q1FY27, but that was largely driven by value growth because of the spiralling gold prices. While people have bought a lot more lightweight, low-carat gold jewellery, silver and lab-grown diamonds, Suvankar says the love for 22-carat gold remains. A large segment of consumers has also been exchanging old gold for new. As a company, Senco Gold, says Suvankar, has been using novel methods of encouraging consumers to invest in gold.

He talks about myDigiGold, which enables consumers to buy and sell gold at any point of the day. “A lot of independent startups have done it, but not a jewellery company. Therefore, we have the additional feature of being able to buy jewellery since we already have a retail setup. You can keep buying gold for as low as ₹300-400, and you can accumulate [the purchases]. You can redeem them online through our website or come to the store,” Suvankar explains.

His aim is to have at least 300 stores by 2030. “We will keep looking at the bigger cities, but we have to look at the smaller towns too because both India and Bharat are growing. As members of the organised segment, it is our responsibility that we reach out to all kinds of consumers and give them that service and the design.” The company has also opened a store in Dubai. The Sen couple is on a mission to make craftsmanship from Bengal popular not only in every nook and cranny of the country but to also make it a global phenomenon.