Tanishq, the jewellery arm of Titan Industries and the country’s leading jewellery retail chain, reported that revenues for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2020-21 were impacted by the pandemic. Having suffered complete loss of sales in April due to the lockdown, revenue in May and June months were at slightly below 20% and around 70% compared to the corresponding months of the previous year.

As of the end of June 2020, Tanishq has reopened around 95% of its stores to date. However, operations of stores tend to get disrupted as and when local governments enforce lockdowns. Customers are being encouraged to visit stores by appointment only to avoid long wait times due to social distancing protocols, the company noted.

Titan fully leveraged its digital platform during this period to help customers in their buying process, including services like video calling, shortlisting products online, live chat facilities and answering queries.

Titan’s quarterly update informed that, “Store reopening and sales recovery is better in non-metros, on the back of lower impact of the pandemic there. Studded (jewellery) share has been lower, primarily due to better recovery in plain gold jewellery sales, investment-led demand and lower sales contribution from the key metro markets, which normally have better studded ratio. There has been a steady enrollment and recurring deposits in the Gold Harvest scheme and the refunds have been minimal.”

The jewellery division launched the Aarambh collection, for both plain and studded jewellery towards the end of quarter in select markets.

CaratLane did relatively well in the quarter with revenue in May and June months at 23% and 85% respectively compared to the same months of the last year.

CaratLane’s online channel did exceptionally well once the e-commerce lockdown restrictions on shipment of non-essentials were lifted. Its offline sale was impacted more as many of its stores are located in malls.

At the end of the quarter about 75% of CaratLane stores were open. The brand launched a new feature, CaratLane Live, which enables customers to do video chats with jewellery consultants and get a real-time view of jewellery designs.