#5: For the love of Jewellery!

Since my obsession with jewellery has just begun, I am all excited to introduce you to Suman Dash, Founder of Vastradi Jewels, a website dedicated to imitation jewellery. An engineer by qualification, Suman left her cushy job 5 years ago so that she could spend quality time with her family. Now a mother to a beautiful daughter, who is equally fond of fashion jewellery at this young age, she started this journey 2 years ago.

“We started Vastradi Jewels with a humble investment of some thousand rupees and posted pictures on our Facebook Page. It was surprising to see so many people appreciating it and the orders started pouring in. There has been a lot of learning throughout, and a lot of hard-work has gone into building up the venture,” she shares.

Since childhood, Suman was exposed to all forms of art and was encouraged to follow her own dreams. She loved collecting unique jewellery pieces, and has the talent of combining semi-precious gems, irregular stones and fine metals with craftsmanship. “I became a jewellery retailer following a fascination for anything beautiful. It occurred to me that a jewellery piece is the smallest object one can wear, that also tells stories. My most joyful experience is when I sell a piece, and people seeing it place orders for similar pieces!” she exclaims.

She is an avid traveller and loves to add fine pieces of jewellery in her closet from all over the world which also resonated well with both her Indian and global customer’s choice. Now she not only designs but also curates jewellery pieces from India and abroad.

“For selling, we've been using the Hybrid Model, online (via Facebook) and offline (exhibitions and events) to sell our products. The website was developed majorly to organize our entire collection, to provide our customers with a platform where they can buy products using credit/debit cards and reach an audience beyond Facebook. Another reason that pushed us to start a website was that searching of a particular kind of products is now much easier,” shares Dash.

The icing on the cake for Suman has been her husband, Vinay Jaiswal, who is also her mentor. An IIT Roorkee Alumni, he recently quit his high-flying sales job and joined Vastradi Jewels full time. His ideas and work experience with a multimillion dollar organisation helps Vastradi reach greater heights, every single day. He has been instrumental in hiring key team members, who are all geared-up to take this business to a higher level. Vastradi Jewels is now on a roll and has set up higher targets to grow in next few years. “We plan to open retail shops in all the high street malls in India and countries like UAE, Malaysia, USA and European region. Meanwhile our website is helping us out to reach to our potential customers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities within India,” adds Suman.

Ask her about the pros and cons and she quips, “Start-ups come with lots of in-built challenges and benefits. The benefit that I see is that I get to spend time with my family and my daughter the way I want. Also, although difficult, but I get to choose the day I get to take off from work.”

Meanwhile, her future plans are building up. “We are also exploring the idea of venturing into the gold and diamond jewellery segment in near future, but before that, our focus is to reach out to as many consumers possible. We promise to serve as a reliable supplier for everything that we offer them,” she says.