Bluestone to raise Rs 550 cr, Nikhil Kamath, Deepinder Goyal, IIFL among investors in latest funding round

Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath is reportedly investing Rs 100 crore, or around $12 million, in online jewellery brand Bluestone. Kamath's investment is part of the latest funding round of the jewellery brand in which Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal, CarDekho founder and CEO Amit Jain, and financial services firm IIFL will take part, a report said on Saturday.

Bluestone founder and CEO Gaurav Singh Kushwaha told the Economic Times that the Bengaluru-based company was in the final stages of securing a funding round amounting to $65 million (around Rs 550 crore), valuing the company at around Rs 3,600 crore ($440 million).

Ranjan Pai, chairman of Manipal Group, and Info Edge Ventures are also involved in the funding round, contributing around Rs 100 crore each. Existing investors, too, are participating in this funding round.

Earlier, the online jewellery brand had raised $30 million from the family office of Sunil Kant Munjal of the Hero Group, which valued the company at $378 million, the report said. 

“We will expand on what’s working for us – the omnichannel play,” Kushwaha said. “We have 175 stores and there is definitely space to have 500-600 stores eventually.”

He said there is strong traction across tier 1 to tier 3 cities. “So, the opportunities are huge. A good chunk of new capital will be used for omnichannel expansion and then technology to weave all things together,” he added.

The company is said to have closed FY23 with a 70% growth in revenue compared to Rs 477 crore in FY22. In FY22 it grew nearly 90% after a flat year of growth in FY21.

“We turned Ebitda profitable in August and we should be able to Ebitda profitable for the full year in FY24,” Kushwaha told ET.

Bluestone was launched in 2011 and is backed by marquee investors including Ratan Tata, Accel, Kalaari, Iron Pillar, IvyCap and Saama Capital.

In a similar deal last month, Tata group company Titan bought over the remaining 27.18 per cent stake in its jewellery arm CaratLane for Rs 4,621 crore in cash from the brand’s founder Mithun Sacheti and his family. CaratLane is an unlisted private company engaged in the manufacture and sale of jewellery and was a subsidiary of Titan. Titan acquired 91.90 lakh equity shares in CaratLane, following which it now holds 98.28 per cent stake in the company.

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