30 August 2012

GRT JEWELLERS


ABOUT GRT

It was in 1964 that G Rajendran founded G R Thangamaligai, in the then fast-growing shopping hub of Chennai (formerly Madras).

Like all great success stories, GRT as the shop is fondly called by customers, began from humble origins.

Through single-minded focus on customer satisfaction, GRT soon became a household name in Chennai. Gaining renown for the purity of its ornaments, wide choice of designs and consistent customer delight.

GRT's growing customer base made necessary the expansion of its retail outlet. A bigger showroom was built to give customers a great shopping ambience, as well as the widest choice of collections. Silverware had its own separate floor, which boasted of the largest collection in India on a single floor.

Subsequently, a new showroom was added on Coats Road, T Nagar, Chennai, reflecting changing tastes and needs of customers. This showroom also boasts of the largest diamond floor in Chennai.

GRT's move to the next level is being steered by G Rajendran's sons, G R Anantha Padmanabhan and G R Radhakrishnan; whose relentless pursuit after growth and passion for the jewellery business, resulted in the birth of showrooms in Tirupathi, Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) and Anna Nagar (Chennai).

Showrooms are now being planned in Bengaluru, Hosur and Visakhapatnam. 
SOURCE: http://www.grtjewels.com/home.aspx








21 August 2012

MUGDHA GODSE ON RAMP IN IIJW 2012 FOR DWARKADAS CHANDUMAL



Laxmi Jewellers Ahmedabad at IIJW 2012







Laxmi Jewellers
From colours, stones to Jadau, Kundan and Polki, Laxmi Jewellery Export Pvt. Ltd had everything that a woman can dream of at the India International Jewellery Week 2012.

With the company’s handcrafted expertise being its forte, the show was a riot of colour and style as the exquisite jewellery designs floated down the ramp on the lovely models.

Presenting four different lines the show opened with “The Diamond Collection” which was sheer poetry, as lacy chokers with matching earrings, bangles encrusted with diamonds and pyramid shaped neckpieces with rubies and pearls dangling on the edges created magic on the ramp.

For the “Polki Jadau Range” there were rows of Polkis on gold Raani Haars with graduating pendants and rubies nestled in a bed of Polkis for shimmering necklaces. The high collar choker, the tantalizing chandelier earrings and the ruby, cabochon emeralds in a V shaped sheet of Polkis were something women dream of.

“The Kundan Line” was a dramatic mix of pearls, gold, rubies and emeralds as they danced in a beautiful melody on the necklaces flowing into a large circle of beads, the Raani Haar with ruby inset pendant, the swinging cummerbunds on slim waist and cuffs on elegant wrists.

“The Antique Kundan Jewellery” line had flat fine Kundan collars, which spread to the ends of shoulders, the Cleopatra neckpiece with centre petalled flower, the arrestingly beautiful Maang tikkas and the giant jhumkas with emeralds rubies showed the company’s expertise in design and style.

The finale was reserved for the very majestic “Jadau Polki” set comprising the three strands of Polkis to create a Raani Haar with giant South Sea pearls, the shoulder dusters that grabbed the attention of every woman in the audience, the solid gold carved cuffs and stunning rings were a perfect end to an opulent presentation of jewellery.

The red and gold lehengas, velvet cholis, dupattas and pre-stitched saris made up the enticingly gorgeous collection created by designer, Sushma Patel to match the glory of the ornaments.

When it comes to jewellery that stands the test of time, Laxmi Jewellery Export Pvt Ltd had all the options that will delight the modern fashionista and the bride-to-be.

SOURCE: http://www.iijw.org/day_1_laxmi_jewels

Bollywood celebs at IIJW 2012










source: http://www.gulte.com/news/9714/Bollywood-celebs-at-IIJW--2012-Photos/13

20 August 2012

Nizam’s Jewels

Crown Jewels of the Nizam





Nizam’s Jewels, valued at $250 - $350 million by the Sotheby’s and Christie’s, date back to early 18th century to early 20 century. Crafted in gold and silver and embellished with enameling, the jewels are set with Colombian emeralds, diamonds from the Golconda mines, Burmese rubies and spinels, and pearls from Basra and Gulf of Mannar.

While India thought they had settled all deals with the Nizams and their 200 heirs, they are back in the news.

Osman Ali Khan nominated not his son, but grandson Mukarram Jah (born in France and had Turkish mother), to be the next (and last) titled Nizam of Hyderabad. Mukarram Jah could not take the battles over his grandfather’s wealth and escaped to Australia where in spite of having the best possible education money could buy (Harrow, Cambridge, LSE, Sandhurst), he run bulldozers, married and divorced five times, one of them being former Miss Turkey. He now lives in a two room apartment in Istanbul, Turkey.

Nizam of Hyderabad is reported to have impregnated 86 of his mistresses, siring more than 100 illegitimate children and a sea of rival claimants.



However, Jah has not been able to escape it all. He has four sons and a daughter from his five wives. The eldest of them, Azmet Jah , a cameraman in Hollywood who has worked with Steven Spielberg, Richard Attenborough, Nicolas Roeg , hopes to come back to Hyderabad.

For the Nizams of Hyderabad, Muslim rulers of fabled wealth whose authority once extended across much of southern India, the armored car that carried four steel trunks away from a Bombay bank vault last month was a punctuation mark to decades of declining fortune.

The trunks, bound for a Government strongroom in New Delhi, held a collection of jewels considered by experts to be one of the greatest ever assembled. Among them was the fabled Jacob diamond, a duck's-egg-size 162-carat stone bought by Hyderabad's ruling family in 1891. It was used for much of this century as a paperweight by Osman Ali Khan, the seventh and last Nizam to rule the royal state.

The jewels -- diamonds, rubies, emeralds and pearls, many in gold settings, some acquired from the old royal courts of France and Russia -- were making their first journey in more than 40 years. For more than half that time, they have been the focus of a struggle between the Indian Government and the heirs of the seventh Nizam, who placed the collection in the Bombay vault after his domain became part of independent India in 1947.


The seventh Nizam, who died in 1967, was known for his vast fortune and for his idiosyncratic ways, including a habit of hoarding cash that once led rats to chew their way through three million pounds in British banknotes in a palace basement. Wary of his family's profligacy, he tied up his fortune in a web of trusts. One of those held the jewelry collection, under terms that forbade its sale until after the death of his oldest son, Azam Jah Bahadur.

When that son died, in 1970, a battle opened with the Indian Government that would continue for 24 years. Finally it was settled by the Supreme Court last month. In a compromise between the heirs, who hoped to sell the jewels abroad, and the Government, which contended that the jewels should become state property with no compensation, the court allowed the Government to buy the jewels.


Setting aside a valuation of $250 million to $300 million by Sotheby's and Christie's, the international auction houses, the court set a price equivalent to $71 million.

For 200 of the heirs, including the present Nizam, Mukkaram Jah, a grandson of the seventh Nizam who spends much of his time on a 500,000-acre sheep farm in western Australia, the settlement was bittersweet. For many, the settlement -- which involves cash payouts for some, annual dividends for others -- will provide badly needed cash to pay off debts or to supplement declining incomes from the seventh Nizam's other trusts.


Indian newspapers have reported that some of the heirs have barely been scraping by on annuities from other trusts that have shrunk to the equivalent of as little as $50 a month.

Now that the jewelry has been sold, other feelings have come into play. Mohammed A. Hadi, who represented the family as secretary of the jewelry trust, said he felt some chagrin as he watched an inventory of the collection last month during the handover at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Bombay.


"Of course, after nearly 20 years, they were happy that there was some finality to the matter," Mr. Hadi said in a telephone conversation from Hyderabad in south-central India. "But it was also an emotional, a wrenching thing."

"They were naturally disappointed that they couldn't get a better price," he said. "And they were disappointed too that a big treasure that has been in the family for centuries has left for another abode."

The jewelry sale has also revived an old debate about the princely families -- the maharajahs and nawabs and nizams -- who ruled vast tracts of India for centuries until 1947. The debate has ebbed and flowed since 1970, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi annulled agreements reached in 1947 under which the rulers of the princely states received generous state pensions as well as other privileges for ceding their domains to the new republic of India.


Some think it outrageous that Indian taxpayers are still paying out money for treasures like the Hyderabad jewels. Others argue that India owes a debt to the survivors of the princely families for having accumulated the palaces and works of art -- and the jewelry -- that now form part of the country's cultural legacy.

Even now, the issue of the Nizam's jewels seems likely to drag on, as some members of the family have threatened to contest their share of the payout. The Telegraph, a Calcutta newspaper, suggested that the spectacle of family members squabbling over the money might have amused the old Nizam. "He might be having a hearty laugh," the paper said, if he sees his descendants "constantly at each others' throats to salvage what they can from the spoils of his dead empire."

Now that it has the jewels, the Indian Government has promised to put them on display, perhaps at the national museum in New Delhi, perhaps in one of the five royal palaces in Hyderabad, several of which were opened to the public by the old Nizam's trustees for the first time last fall.

For the time being, the stones are back in a vault, this time in the sandstone fortress that is headquarters for the Reserve Bank of India.
 
source: http://www.24x7funonline.com/2011/09/crown-jewels-of-nizam.html

Kalyan Jewellers to invest Rs 1,000 crore this year

Thrissur-based Kalyan Jewellers plans to invest Rs 1,000 crore this year to open 15 more showrooms across the country.
The showrooms will be in Gujarat, Maharasthra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and in Kerala. Showrooms in Warangal, Kukkatpally (Hyderabad), Kancheepuram, Kakkinada and Ahmadabad, will open in the second half of 2012 and would expand to 100 stores spread across India by 2015.
Speaking to reporters in connection with the opening of the 36th showroom in Kochi, T. S. Kalyanaraman, Chairman and Managing Director of Kalyan Jewellers, said the number of showrooms would touch 50 by the end of this year.
He said the group is targeting a turnover of Rs 16,000 crore in the current fiscal. The brand had a turnover of Rs 9,473 crore in the last fiscal. The sales for the first quarter were Rs 2,915 crore, he added.
At present, Kalyan Jewellers has a customer base of more than 7 lakh, which is also the largest in the country, he claimed.
Earlier, the group’s 36th showroom in Kochi was inaugurated on Sunday by Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Malayalam actor Dileep.
The showroom has been set up in an area of 20,000 sq feet spread over three floors and offers a variety of jewellery. The largest ever collection of gold- studded designs with silver designs and a collection of gift articles are among those displayed.
The over 100-year-old Kalyan Jewellers recently signed up two mega superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as brand ambassadors.
Source: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/marketing/article3795985.ece?homepage=true&ref=wl_home

14 August 2012

Lessons on Gold from India

Gold for jewellery is usually separated from gold for investment when calculating the numbers on total gold consumption. However, large populations around the world view the two as synonymous. Excluding gold jewellery from investment demand is inaccurate, therefore, because there are many cultures where a gold necklace is considered, for all practical purposes, an investment.


This article contains the text of an interview with a woman who has lived in India her whole life, and gives a fascinating insight into how Indians view gold. Shanta, the interviewee, notes that in India gold is seen as the best way to preserve and invest wealth; it is viewed as a basic store of value; the middle class prefers to keep roughly 20% of their total wealth in gold; there is a trend toward buying coins and bars as well as jewellery; families view their gold as collateral and prefer not to sell it except in extreme cases; high prices are no enticement to sell; falling prices are of no consequence because families prefer to keep and add to their ounces.
Clearly, gold jewellery in India is more than a fancy adornment; it’s a store of value and preserver of wealth. It’s not even an investment; it’s more important than a rising brokerage statement. Indians aren’t wondering how good a gold bracelet will look on their wrist, but rather are seeing it as a vehicle for storing wealth.
There’s a lesson here for North Americans. Gold in any form is more than just a thing of beauty; it is a store of value. Given the race to the bottom amongst fiat currencies, gold is not just a potential moneymaker but protection against the coming inflation that will damage economy and dilute pocketbooks.

 (Shanta's relatives at a party. The nose piece is called a "Nath," and a "Tikka" is on the forehead. Both are worn by married women, though increasingly unmarried women wear them as well.)












I think there’s a lesson in this for us North Americans. How do you view the gold you own – is it a pretty coin, an investment, or a store of value? Given the obscene abuse most fiat currencies are undergoing, I think we’d be best served viewing it as not just a potential money maker but as protection against the rabid inflation that will damage our economy and dilute our pocketbooks.

  Vedran Vuk, Senior Analyst

Casey's Daily Dispatch Editor

source:http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/lessons-gold-india

Gold's glittering history

Since its discovery 7,000 years ago gold has been spun, stretched, beaten, eaten or just stashed in bank vaults
 
1.GOLD and copper were the first metals to be discovered by man, around 5000 BCE. The oldest gold jewellery so far found dates from 4000 BCE.
2. There are between 120,000 and 140,000 tonnes of mined gold in the world, or about 23 grams per person.
3. The US gold reserve is just over 8,000 tonnes – which is about 6% of the gold ever mined. It is worth about $100bn, or 1.5% of the US national debt.
4. Gold is so rare that more steel is poured in an hour than gold since the beginning of recorded time.
5. 75% of all gold in circulation has been extracted since 1910.
6. It can be stretched for miles – gold is so soft and malleable that an ounce could be stretched into a wire 50 miles long, or flattened into a sheet 100 sq ft (about 9 sq metres) in area.
7. Native Scottish gold is one of the purest forms of gold, at 22.8 carats (24 carats is pure gold).
8. About 30,000 tonnes of the world's gold (20-25% of above ground inventory) is held in central bank vaults.
9. 75% of the world's gold is held privately as jewellery, bullion and coin.
10. Gold is still being mined and refined at the rate of almost 2,600 tonnes a year.
11. 20% of the world's gold reserve is used in India as decoration and in sarees.
12. Carats, the measurement of gold, is originally a weight based on the carob seed, used by ancient merchants in the Middle East.
13. The marking system for gold, where each item is clearly stamped with its caratage, is required by law in many countries and was developed in London in the 14th century at Goldsmiths' Hall.
14. Gold is edible. Some Asian countries put gold in fruit, jelly snacks, coffee, and tea. Since at least the 1500s, Europeans have been putting gold leaf in bottles of liquor, such as Danziger Goldwasser and Goldschlager.
15. The Greeks thought that gold was a dense combination of water and sunlight.




Gold jewellery in India where 20% of the world's reserves is used in decoration and clothing. Photograph: Ajay Verma/Reuters/Reuters

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/apr/20/gold-commodities
 

13 August 2012

GOLD IN SPORT? DC SHOES: KEN BLOCK'S GYMKHANA FIVE: ULTIMATE URBAN PLAYGROUND; SAN FRANCISCO


Shot on the actual streets of San Francisco, California, GYM5 features a focus on fast, raw and precise driving action. Filmed over four days, director Ben Conrad and his team are back to work on their second Gymkhana production and delivered the entire city of San Francisco as Ken Block's personal gymkhana playground. DC Shoes also provided fellow DC athlete and longtime Ken Block friend, Travis Pastrana, to make a cameo appearance on his dirtbike, and S.F. resident Jake Phelps of Thrasher Magazine fame also makes a cameo as Block hoons S.F. in his most incredible Gymkhana yet.

For more information check us out at http://www.dcshoes.com/auto  

-યુટ્યુબ પર 1 લાખથી વધુ લોકોએ કર્યો છે લાઇક, 17 હજારથી વધુ કોમેન્ટ્સ

ભારતીય કાર ડિઝાઇનર દિલીપ છાબડિયા દ્વારા ડિઝાઇન કરવામાં આવેલી એક કારનો વીડિયો યુટ્યુબ પર ખૂબ જોવાઇ રહ્યો છે. વીડિયોમાં કેન બ્લોક સાન ફ્રાન્સિસ્કોના રસ્તા પર કાર દોડાવી રહ્યો છે. 9 મિનિટ 52 સેકન્ડનો આ વીડિયો 9 જુલાઈના રોજ યુટ્યુબ પર પોસ્ટ કરવામાં આવ્યો હતો અને તેને ભારતીય સમય અનુસાર બુધવાર 1 વાગ્યા સુધીના લગભગ 78 લાખ 30 હજાર વખત નિહાળવામાં આવ્યો હતો. આ વીડિયોને લગભગ 1 લાખ 10 હજાર લોકોએ પસંદ પણ કર્યો છે. એટલું જ નહીં લગભગ 17 હજાર લોકોએ કોમેન્ટ્સ પણ આપી છે.

કોણ છે દિલીપ છાબડિયા

દિલીપ છાબડિયા ભારતીય મૂળના કાર ડિઝાઇનર છે. 1983માં અમેરિકાની પ્રતિષ્ઠિત કાર નિર્માતા કંપની જનરલ મોટર્સમાં એક વર્ષ નોકરી કર્યા બાદ ભારત પાછા ફર્યા હતાં અને અહીંયા પોતાની કાર ડિઝાઇન કંપની શરૂ કરી. 1993માં શરૂ થયેલી તેમની કંપની ડીસી ડિઝાઇન સૌથી અનોખી કાર ડિઝાઇન કરવા માટે જાણીતી છે.  SOURCE: divyabhaskar.com

04 August 2012

JEWELLERY FASHION SHOW VIDEO



Kashi Jewellers with Isha Koppikar at IIJW 2011


 

 

CVM FASHION SHOW IIJW 2011



Zeenat Aman, Mahima Choudhary & Amrita Rao Walk the Ramp at IIJW