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
IICT partners with Gativedhi to bring studio production tools to students
New MoU lets students explore AI-driven production pipelines for AVGC-XR
MUMBAI: The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) has teamed up with Gativedhi Technologies to give students a front-row seat to modern studio production. The collaboration will integrate Gativedhi’s AI-powered production intelligence platform, Shotrack, into academic programmes, letting students experience the workflow systems used by animation, VFX and gaming studios.
Under the MoU, faculty, students and researchers will get hands-on access to Shotrack through beta programmes, pilot deployments and academic evaluations. This will allow them to explore simulated production pipelines, understand asset management, track tasks and monitor schedules, essentially seeing how complex projects come together behind the scenes.
Shotrack is designed to tackle a key industry challenge: when multiple studios work on the same project, differing internal systems often create bottlenecks, slow approvals and complicate version control. The platform provides a unified production environment, enabling smoother collaboration across distributed teams while generating operational insights and predictive analytics to optimise crew allocation, forecast schedule risks and manage costs.
The collaboration also opens doors to Gativedhi’s wider ecosystem. Upcoming tools include StudioTrack, for studio operations management covering budgeting, recruitment and IT infrastructure, and WorkTrack, which measures workflow efficiency and team productivity across industries.
IICT plans to embed these tools into programmes covering animation pipelines, VFX workflows, gaming production and media project management. Students will also benefit from guest lectures, masterclasses, workshops, internships and research projects that connect academic learning with real-world studio practices.
IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar, said the partnership provides “An environment where production pipeline tools can be explored, tested and refined while students gain insight into how large-scale productions are organised.”
Gativedhi Technologies founder & CEO Senthil Kumar added, “This collaboration introduces students to real-world studio management tools and helps us improve our platform with academic feedback.”
With Shotrack in classrooms, India’s future animators, VFX artists and gaming producers will get a taste of studio life long before they step into one.
