Zoya, the luxury jewellery brand from the House of Tata, recently opened its 11th store in Chennai. The brand plans to take the total store count to 15 by the end of this fiscal year.
The brand believes that it is well positioned for strong growth and expansion.
“In the next 5-10 years, there will be an explosion of luxury opportunities and Zoya is well placed to capitalise on that,” said CK Venkatraman, MD, Titan.
In an interaction with ETRetail, he further shared the scope of expansion of Zoya in India, increasing opportunites for luxury and a lot more.
Here are the edited excerpts:-
Zoya was launched in 2009 and since then, the brand has opened 11 stores and 7 galleries. Don’t you think that you are opening stores at a slow pace?
Creating a luxury brand that can hold its own in the existing environment of luxury in the world is not easy. In the last 5 years, we have an exceptional work to take the brand where it is today. To do this requires patience, implying international standards of quality, and creating a playbook that can be rolled at scale.
We have reached a point where it can be scaled up, however, scaling up will be measured because the Indian luxury market is not that large for us to open so many stores.
But in the next 5-10 years, there will be an explosion of luxury opportunities and Zoya is well placed to capitalise on that.
So, how do you foresee the expansion of brand Zoya in India?
Our target is to open three to five stores of Zoya every year. Not more really. Expanding the presence at galleries is not our preferred choice because customers can get the overall experience of Zoya at the EBOs.
Generally, the store size of Zoya varies between 3,500 sq.ft – 5,000 sq.ft. So as consumer preferences are changing, do you have any plans to bring changes to your store size?
We believe that the luxury store for one particular category should not be huge and there should be some coziness. So, I suspect that our store sizes will remain in the current range as it is adequate to deliver a certain grandness while delivering intimacy.
Post-covid, there has been a surge in demand for luxury from tier II and beyond. So, how are you planning to capture these markets?
We have seen an explosive demand for Tanishq coming from tier II cities and beyond, but, luxury is still a new habit for Indians. So, these cities are still not viable for Zoya to open the stores there.
However, we plan to create a demand for brands like Zoya in tier II cities and beyond over the next few years, but those demands will be fulfilled by the nearby metro and tier I cities or through omnichannel as consumers have opened up to buy items online. So, no plans to open stores in such cities yet.
In the online space, how has been the demand for Zoya in India?
The share of online is still small but it is staggering. Currently 95 per cent of our sales happen offline. Zoya store is an experience in itself, however, we are enabling everything that consumer wants. The discovery, exploration and to some extent shortlisitng as well can happen online.
How do you foresee the growth of brand Zoya in India?
In the coming few years, we foresee Zoya growing at the rate of 50 per cent CAGR because of the increasing opportunities in the luxury space.
Last fiscal, Zoya forayed into international markets like the US. Do you plan to open more stores in the international waters?
We do not have a plan yet to open Zoya stores outside India, however, we do have a presence in a few galleries in the US. Currently, the Indian luxury market is the substantial focus for Zoya and we are going to invest in that.
How do you plan to expand the share of Zoya in the overall business of Titan?
Actually, the share of business of Zoya in Titan is very small. Titan caters to the mass premium segment, therefore, any luxury part of Titan, especially in the early stages that Zoya is in, is a small part of it. And, it’ll continue to remain a relatively small part of it.
FM Nirmala Sitharaman in her recent budget speech announced cuts in basic customs duty on gold, silver, and platinum. How do you see it impacting the demand during the festive season?
We are quite bullish on the demand for this festive season as the psychological impact of the customs duty drop on the customers has been strong. It showed in the pent-up demand in July and is expected to continue to play out.
