Titan's Tentative Foray into Lab Growns

It's not quite a Lightbox moment, but it's certainly worth mentioning when India's biggest jewelry retailer finally dips its toe into lab growns.

Titan, with over 760 stores across its Tanishq, Mia, Zoya, and CaratLane brands, had long resisted any move away from natural diamonds.

Ajoy Chawla, CEO of its jewelry division, spoke just a year ago of his "strong belief in natural diamonds," effectively quashing rumors at the time that the company was about to embrace lab growns.

To be fair, the company, part of Tata, India's largest conglomerate, never actually made a solemn declaration that it would never sell lab growns. It just never sold lab growns.

And now it does. It is, however, deliberately maintaining an iron wall between its new lab grown enterprise - called beYon - and its existing operations.

The first beYon store opened on Monday (29 December) in Mumbai. Titan plans another couple very soon, one more in Mumbai, another in Delhi.

But it's clearly taking baby steps here, tentatively testing the market in a modest but strategic move.

It could be the start of a long-term diversification, but Titan is clearly concerned that it doesn't cannibalize its core brands - from the mass market Tanishq to high-end Zoya, where most pieces are priced above $6,000.

Its beYon offering is very much aimed at Gen Zs and millennials or the "fashion experimenters" with most items priced at $500 to $1,000.

It's cutting costs by providing its own in-house certificates, rather than having its stones externally graded.

And, unlike all other Titan brands, it won't be offering buybacks because lab growns depreciate so quickly in value. The beYon customers are buying for Instagram, not for heirlooms.

So why the move, and why now? It's partly a response to Trent, another Tata company that's actually a fashion retailer rather than a jeweler.

It launched 20 or so lab grown kiosks, branded as Pome, selling 1-carat solitaire engagement rings for under $300, and found plenty of buyers. It managed to validate volume potential without cannibalizing Titan's natural brands, and Titan is now following suit.

More broadly, it's a response to the exploding demand for affordable and "ethical" sparkle from a well-established retailer.

Titan has deep pockets and can afford to experiment with lab growns. It also realizes that in many ways it can no longer afford not to.

India's lab grown market may only be 2 per cent by value of the country's total retail diamond market (US is over 40 per cent), but it can see which way the wind is blowing.

Titan's timid foray into lab growns is, as we said at the start, hardly a Lightbox moment.

It hasn't sent shockwaves through the diamond community like De Beers did with what many saw as a "betrayal" - legitimizing lab growns and undermining natural stones.

Most high end jewelers still stick to natural, although Tiffany & Co's parent company, LVMH, has invested in Lusix lab growns.

Chow Tai Fook, with over 7,000 stores across China, dabbled briefly with lab growns, but now sells only natural. By contrast, Signet, the biggest diamond retailer in the US, says 17 per cent of its sales this year were from lab growns.

Titan is playing it very safe. The stakes are not high. But it is another incremental step in the lab grown journey.

Have a fabulous weekend, and a fabulous 2026.