Brands
Candere buy to help Kalyan Jewellers add 5-7% to its topline
MUMBAI: Kalyan Jewellers, one of India’s trusted and leading jewellery brands, announced the acquisition of online jewellery firm Candere. The acquisition will augment Kalyan Jewellers presence in the growing online jewellery segment in India.
Kalyan will acquire the equity held by Singularity Strategic, the family office of Brijesh Chandwani and Subram Kapoor. This is Kalyan Jeweller’s first strategic move of its kind as the company continues to pursue aggressive growth plans, both organically and inorganically.
Established in 2013, Candere sells jewellery online in India, USA and UK. It has a portfolio of over 4,000 designs including a strong offering in the high growth diamond jewellery segment. This transaction will help Kalyan establish a strong presence in the ecommerce segment to complement its vast physical retail presence.
Following the acquisition, Candere will be “powered by Kalyan Jewellers” as it continues to build resonance with existing and potential online jewellery shoppers. Kalyan Jewellers will significantly boost Candere’s customer offerings by virtue of its depth of merchandise, which caters to different market segments and customer tastes.
Post Investment, Kalyan plans to launch some of its established sub-brands like Glo, Antara, Anokhi, Nimah, through the Candere online store. Through this investment, Kalyan will also be able to expand Candere’s geography into the growing West Asian market including UAE, Kuwait and Qatar thus augmenting Candere’s existing coverage.
Kalyan will leverage its vast network of 105 showrooms and distributed supply chain across India and West Asia to enhance Candere’s fulfillment layer and work towards creating a robust online-offline hybrid customer experience.
Kalyan Jewellers executive director Rajesh Kalyanaraman said, “Candere’s recent foray into UK and USA markets also helps Kalyan augment its ambition of becoming a global Indian brand. Both companies have strong design and manufacturing capabilities and the synergies therein will help strengthen our offering to existing as well as new customers. The integrated offline and online offering will provide customers more flexibility and convenience while enhancing their shopping experience.”
“We believe that the online jewellery market offers tremendous growth potential and expect it to contribute 5-7% of our topline over the next five years. The acquisition will also accelerate contribution of our global revenues.’’
Founder-promoter Rupesh Jain said, “Kalyan is a formidable jewellery brand and Candere will be able to scale up rapidly by using Kalyan’s strong supply chain network and physical presence. The integration will also provide up selling and cross-selling opportunities and bolster revenues.’’
Brands
Rakesh Menon joins Paytm as avp – lending
Fintech product leader takes on new role after building digital lending, payments and credit products across fintech ecosystem
MUMBAI: Rakesh Menon has joined Paytm as assistant vice president – lending, taking on a new role focused on strengthening the company’s lending and credit products.
Prior to this, Menon worked at Profectus Capital Pvt Ltd as chief manager – payments based financing and digital lending.
At Profectus, he designed and launched digital credit products for merchants with variable cash flows, including overdraft-linked and revenue-share lending models. He led end-to-end LOS–LMS API integrations with payment partners and aggregators, enabling real-time underwriting, disbursal and repayment workflows.
He also worked on funnel optimisation initiatives using journey analytics, improving onboarding, KYC and disbursal conversion by 35 per cent. He developed ecosystem partnerships for transaction-data-based credit assessment and automated settlement systems, and collaborated with credit and data science teams to strengthen risk models and early delinquency detection.
Menon standardised partner onboarding and API frameworks, reducing go-live timelines by 40 per cent and improving digital scalability.
Before Profectus Capital, he worked at PayU as senior manager – presales lead – enterprise business from August 2022 to August 2023. He set up a national presales function for fintech and digital commerce clients, aligning solutions such as EMI, BNPL, BBPS and offer engines to merchant requirements.
He also helped improve conversion rates by around 15 per cent through merchant persona mapping, demo frameworks and structured sales playbooks, working closely with product and go-to-market teams.
From April 2019 to July 2022, Menon served as business unit head – SMB – direct acquisitions at Worldline, where he built the SMB online payments vertical from scratch. The business scaled to Rs 2,500 crore in annual transaction volume, growing at 45 per cent year-on-year.
During this period, he introduced paperless onboarding processes including eKYC and eSign, developed partner dashboards and CRM automation systems, and integrated platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Tally to expand merchant adoption.
Across roles, Menon has worked across digital lending, payments and merchant financing, with experience in product development, ecosystem partnerships, API integrations and fintech-led growth strategies.
At Paytm, he will focus on scaling lending products and strengthening digital credit infrastructure within the company’s financial services ecosystem.
His appointment comes as fintech firms continue to expand their lending and embedded finance offerings in a competitive market.
