Good morning, everyone. It's wonderful to be back here again. I have known many of you for nearly two decades. It's been a wonderful journey together with all of you. You know, I think at its core, you're all well-wishers of the company and everything else actually springs from that, the feeling from that relationship. And it's been a great journey of being encouraged, challenged, critiqued by all of you on an annual basis at these conferences, earlier, once in two years now, and quarterly calls and other kinds of interactions.
So thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for, in a way, keeping this part of a very, very critical part of the financial performance of the company, the governance of the company, in the right place for maximizing value for all the shareholders here and outside. Thank you very much for that. You know, given the nature of India today as an economy and the opportunity that it represents, especially for a company like Titan, two years back, we charted out, you know, around the time when we came here and met you last, we charted out a program called the Titan Turbo, which is actually turbocharging towards the future, because the surrounding conditions for a company like Titan were very, very opportune. I would like to begin with that opportunity first. If you see the...
any, any report from any consulting company, any economist speaks about, an accelerated change in the top income classes of this company, of this country, even as the country marches towards a $5,000 per capita income. So it's very marked in the top two income segments, which are called the elite and the affluent, and in this decade, the share of those households to the total is expected to double. And Titan Company is very, very closely aligned with these households for its business. Almost every new business that we can get into typically sort of caters to these segments, and, that's a good, you know, thing from a Titan Company point of view, which advantage is not available for, you know, mass market companies who would cater to middle class and the lower middle classes. The second thing is that...
Just give me a second, please. Sorry about that. The second thing is that in virtually every category in which we operate, and we have chosen to enter categories which are, you know, informal, unorganized, by and large. So in any category we enter, even after many years, jewelry, it's now 27, 28 years, we are still in a high single-digit market share for the jewelry business of Titan, for example, and likewise in many other categories other than Watches. So therefore, the headroom, the formalization accelerates in a period of affluencing that's happening, and that formalizing, that acceleration, will give us one more tailwind in this growth journey.
The third is, you know, Bharat markets are rising in affluence, rising in access, desire, and everywhere we go, for example, whether it is Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh, or Dumka in Jharkhand, or Malda in Bengal, or Pollachi in Tamil Nadu, or Kudal in Maharashtra, smallest of towns, Jharsuguda in Odisha, you know, many towns that some of us haven't heard of, but we go and plant the flag there, and the flag is, you know, starting to fly really strongly in those markets. This, given the kind of country, I don't know how many of you have traveled really deep into India, and many of us in Titan, because we are a company like that, have done that.
And when you go to a town which is, you know, 4-5 lakhs, you go to a small town like Satna in Madhya Pradesh, it's a very small town, I mean, in that sense, but there are maybe 3 lakh people, which is a lot of people. And when a Zudio and a Tanishq are next to each other, even a Zudio is going into Satna. So therefore, the almost unlimited depth of that opportunity, particularly from a decadal point of view, is very, very strong. That's another third thing. And of course, a lot of them want Tanishq, a lot of them want Titan, certainly all of them want Tata, therefore the power of that is taking us there. And of course, outside India, the diaspora is claiming its Indianness even more so.
There seems to be a sense of destiny, certainly a feeling of destiny among Indians outside India, about our country has, you know, really come of age and we are like one of the top, you know, countries in the world, and therefore, they're proud to wear their Indianness on their sleeve, celebrate Indianness like never before, so the weddings and the festivals and all that. And the products that we make, and particularly jewelry, is very much central to that Indianness, and we are seeing the benefits of that even as I speak. So in a way, the opportunities are very strong and multidimensional, and therefore this whole turbocharging is, you know, built on that evidence, on that foundation of multiple tailwinds.
I'll just give you a flavor of the company in FY 2027 and leave it to the CEOs and Ashok to speak about all those in greater detail. One is that, you know, we've always considered ourself as a, you know, string of pearls company. We wanted to make many things which adorn people and which make people, feel and look good, and we are focused on products which come on the person, of a person, on the body of a person. Some of you have certainly spoken about it taking us some, you know, some longer time to get them to scale, and that's, you know, we are aware of that.
I mean, there has been a certain attempt to accelerate that, and we have done some good work in the last few years, but in the next 3-4 years, we expect to scale those much better. So whether it is, you know, smart wearables, which picked up, really speaking, from 2021 in a serious way, or Fragrances, women's bags, Taneira, every one of which has got a very strong opportunity. We are looking at a big scale-up in the next 3 years, between 2024 and 2027. 3x in wearables, 2x in Fragrances, and 3x in women's bags and Taneira.
These are all volume numbers because, certainly in a company like Titan, where the ticket size of jewelry is 100,000+ INR, it's a little, you know, incomplete and, you know, not the right thing to compare revenue share of other businesses. Whereas, you know, perfume, a bottle of perfume is on average INR 2,500, it's 1/40th. Smart wearable is maybe INR 3,500-INR 4,000, 1/25th, and so on. And therefore, the numbers of customers that we have is a very important metric from a lifestyle products company point of view, so this is a very important, share change in volume that we see in the next three years. A respectable international business share.
Now, because the jewelry industry in India is so large, and Tanishq and the other brands together is, are also very large, the outside India is still, you know, small, but growing at a very rapid pace. We have done so much in the last three and a half years that we've actually, from the first store that we set up in October of 2021, you know, really scaling up at a blistering pace. But since it's a very late start, the share is low. But between FY 2024 and FY 2027, we see a marked change from 2%, you know, more than doubling to 5% in share to the total business of the company.
We see a lot of opportunity here, certainly in the NRI/PIO side, but equally, you know, as we are imagining possibilities in America and North America, among the White Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and here, Emiratis, Jordanians, Filipinos, many other nationalities, local and other nationalities which live in the GCC area, in Singapore. We are certainly starting to look at those customers who live, shop in the areas where the Tanishq brand is set up, and we are reimagining jewelry for them and starting to think about how we can get a decent share of our total business from other than Indians, and I'm sure that will also have some kind of bonus sitting on the growth side.
We are also looking towards a more balanced financial performance portfolio across all our businesses, and I will leave it to Ashok to talk about that. Obviously, you know, the age of each business has a bearing on its financial performance, and our most recent business, in a sense, is the bags business, which is just about a year and a half old. Really speaking, and if I include Fastrack, maybe three, four years. So obviously, it's not yet pulling its weight. Whereas the mature businesses like watches, wearables, which is new, jewelry, of course, and EyeC are, you know, they are certainly pulling their weight in terms of the EBIT margin profile. Of course, with some room for improvement, without doubt, but acceptable levels nevertheless of EBIT and ROCE. But Taneira, bags, perfumes, international, wearables, those have to, you know, fire better.
We are looking for improvements happening in these in the next three years, so that the overall dispersion on the EBIT margin, as well as the return on capital employed, is lower, and there is a certain sense of good deployment of the total capital that the company has. But I will certainly assure you that from a management... You know, I remember many, many years back when I was the CEO of the jewelry business, there have been conferences where some of you have asked, "Shouldn't you be focusing only on jewelry," for example, you know? "Or only on a few businesses?" And things like that. And we had replied that we are actually a lifestyle products company. You know, equally, our focus is on the number of customers that we excite with every product that we make, and when, you know, the lady uses her-...
Skinn or Noura in the morning, the impact that it has on her is, you know, no less than when she wears a INR 10 lakh necklace in the evening of Tanishq. And we certainly believe in that idea, that the price of the product or the size of the business is not the only measure of our own raison d'etre. But at the same time, we understand that we need to bring each one of them to some level of scale, some certain leadership in the category in which, you know, we are there, and of course, deliver an acceptable level of financial performance. So all these are sort of evolving, and we expect to reach that by 2027.
From an overall time invested point of view, I can also assure you that these are all independent teams working on these businesses. All costs of the businesses are captured in the P&L of those, so therefore, there is no subsidy or some waste sitting outside that. Some of us who are in the center are, you know, prudent enough to devote only the appropriate time, including the future, that each business represents for that, and not, in a way, leave out, in a way. So it's an efficient, effective way of overall top management time. Coming to the last part of my talk, which is on the subject of ESG. This is something very close to our hearts.
We've been a very conscious ESG company much before the word ESG was actually even coined, way back, and we've been like that for a long time. But now we are putting all this under this framework because that's the vocabulary of the times. In FY 2024, we touched 600+ thousand-plus people and 100+ K-plus, 100,000+ transformed. By transformed, you know, for example, a cataract surgery that we delivered free to somebody is transforming that person's life, or a person we enabled to become good at handling computers and employable, that person's life is transformed. Or a little girl who's passed from fifth standard and went into sixth, her life is transformed. So that is the definition of transformation.
So out of all the 600,000 people that we touched, 100,000 belong to these kinds of categories, and we take a lot of pride in that. So let me just run you through just pictures of the kind of stuff we do. So this is the Titan Kanya program. This is the LEAP program, which is skilling of youth. We do a lot of work on arts and crafts, supporting artisans of various types across the country. We do work in many parts of India, in Karnataka, in Tamil Nadu. This is a picture from Uttarakhand, where we work with villages in an integrated manner to improve livelihood. This is our Happy Eyes program, where we take experts to villages and check the eyes of kids, adults, conduct cataract surgeries, give specs to them.
On the subject of water, this is the lake which adjoins our corporate office. Some of you may have come there and seen that. We also do a lot of work in Uttarakhand to help communities which are, you know, needing water, by bringing water through gravity to their doorsteps or, you know, strengthening the water tables in those areas through multiple interventions. We have done a lot of work in supplier transformation. The supplier responsibility side is very strong. There's a program called 4 P, which is people, process, place, planet, in the jewelry business, which actually a benchmark practice in the industry. The TSEP is the Titan Supplier Engagement Protocol, which we have brought in into the diamond cutting and polishing processes of our partners to transform that as well, and we plan to take it wider into the other parts of the company.
lot of work done on the diversity, equity, inclusion side, and a lot of acceleration in the last 18 months on this, and we are very proud, and we are very focused on bringing equity for starting with women, but also other disadvantaged segments subsequently. Changing the culture of the organization to become much more inclusive, expanding the funnel of people coming into the organization at all levels so that we have, you know... Even this room, it's not just Titan, but even this room should look more diverse sometime in the future, and I think every organization is working towards that. We're very strong in governance. I'm not sure how many of you know, but in 2021, in the first ever award constituted by Economic Times and Amrop, Titan Company was voted as the best board in the country.
It was every big board was there, from, you know, HDFC to Infosys, to Tata Steel, to TCS, and you name it. It was all boards in the country, and we were voted the best board after all that, and it's a big source of pride. It was a big moment of pride, you know, for us. And lastly, on ethical standards, we are certainly a torchbearer company when it comes to ethical standards. Our corporate office is named Integrity. It is not named the Titan Summit or the Titan Palace or whatever, anything like that. It's called Integrity for a reason, and I won't obviously belabor the point here. And we take a lot of pride.
In fact, when you ask employees at large in Titan, "Why do you like Titan most?" The question is almost always because of the ethical standards of Titan, is the first thing that comes up, and we take a lot of pride in that. We do a lot of work, and we are a benchmark company in the group as well, a group which is very well known for ethics. So that is about the broad scope of the ESG thing. And while we have done a lot of work on this subject, and you saw the photographs of our work, we do believe that there are pieces on the ESG side that we need to now step up, step up on, particularly on the environment side.
We have done a lot, a lot of work on society and governance, but environment is, in a way, a low-hanging fruit, a priority. So on energy from consumption to substitution with renewables, a lot of work is waiting to be done on energy. Water, I mean, it is in fact perhaps even more pressing in India as a subject than energy is today. Circular economy, we do a fair amount of recycling of our jewelry. 40%, nearly, of our production now is recycled gold, and we are dreaming big to reach much higher levels. Diversity, equity, inclusion, I spoke of. Partner responsibility. We have done substantial work on the retail and distributor partner relationship over decades, and decent work on the vendor partner side, but we, you know, have some more distance to travel on that. I'll just show you a film.
So we really feel proud that we are an extremely stakeholder-focused company, and the route to shareholder value creation is actually putting the stakeholders in the center of everything that we do, and that's certainly proved to be a very right and very human approach over the decades, and we will continue doing that. Just closing on why and how Titan would continue to deliver success over the next many years and many decades? Very strong brands and very strong customer value propositions. So we take a lot of time, put in a lot of effort to build the CVP, as we call it, and build the GTM, the go-to-market strategy. And once the CVP is strong and the GTM is clear, then the scaling becomes simple, easy, effective. Deep network reach into India. We are now close to 3,000 stores.
We have our flags flying. I gave you the names of some of the towns everywhere, and that deep reach, nobody can beat us in many of the categories that we operate. Exceptional customer relationships at scale. We've got 32-33 million customers in our Encircle database, and with our CRM engines now, we are connected with them digitally, but hundreds of thousands, in fact, millions of those people are connected physically with the 20,000+ staff that we have. There is a deep relationship which is between them. That is, again, a big thing to beat for anybody in our industries. Capabilities across all parts of the value chain. We are an expert, starting from design, development, manufacturing and sourcing.... retailing and customer experience, merchandising, brand building, after-sale service, supply chain, you name it, you know, we either own it or we control it.
We have deep expertise, and that, that expertise helps us to deliver competitive advantage on the one hand in every category. Customers prefer us because of that deep expertise, and the maximizing of the profit opportunity also comes because of that control of all parts, all parts of the value chain. Benchmark partner relationships with vendors, with distributors, with franchisees, it is a relationship of a very different order, that there is a deep personal connect that people of Titan have with those partners. And of course, coming to the people of Titan itself, the culture, capability, and commitment which the people of Titan have, that combination is, again, a very, very unique combination. So that's where I end. Thank you very much. Looking forward to all the presentations from my colleagues, and of course, engagement after that. Thank you.
Good morning. Thanks, Venkat, for that introduction, and sets the agenda for the day. It's a beautiful day, and let me take you on a ride to a whole new world of Taneira. It's a brand that we are building with a lot of TLC, so please hop on and let's go on the ride. That's the plan. I'm going to take you through the market size and the scenario, the competitive landscape. I'm going to share what the brand vision is, and thereafter, talk to you about the brand promises and customer value proposition. We are also going to tell you that how we are winning the customers and how we are really building this business for scale, and what is our FY 2027 ambition. Sari is a five thousand-year-old category. It's actually a design wonder.
So if you think of it, it's a free-size, unstitched garment that has lasted for over 5,000 years. Now, how many categories can we really talk about like that? It's never gone out of style, and if I were to quote Taylor Swift, "We never go out of style. We never go out of style." And it's a large category as well. It's a INR 50,000 crore-plus category, and if you look at the overall women's ethnic wear category, its that's market is over INR 125,000 crore, and it's growing as well. So market estimates put it at 6%-8% CAGR on revenue. That's the competitive landscape. So if you see on the horizontal axis is the price, low to high, and on the vertical axis, you have design, low to high.
And if you see the top right quadrant, that's where all the market designers are, and the bottom left corner is, or the bottom left quadrant is where all the mass market brands are. And our brand is positioned to own the design-led mid-premium space. Some more research, so with that, 60% of sari purchases are for weddings and festivals, and if we really want to win in this category, we have to win wedding and festivals, and that's exactly what the plan is. Our vision is to become India's most loved women's ethnic wear brand, and we are well on our journey to become that. Our brand promises and CVP, this is what we have chosen to be, and we have best of India.
We bring the best of India under one roof in our stores and online. Our saris are handcrafted, and they are design differentiated, and we are building on the trust, the legacy of Tata Trust. So we choose from over 100 clusters across India, and we have a very delightful cluster mix of, you know, national and state-specific clusters. We bring the craft and cluster stories alive in our stores through very impactful visual merchandising and a very knowledgeable staff. We want to position Taneira as the thought leader in the Indian textile space. We are working directly with over 6,000 weavers, and if you also include the artisans, we are working with about 12,000 weavers and artisans from across the country.
Our saris are design differentiated, and we focus on the diverse crafts and art forms, and we achieve this through a very talented in-house design team, and we put across, and bring out, almost 16 new collection drops every year. So this is how we are building on trust. Every claim that we make about our products are backed by either a tag or a certificate or a lab report. So if it's a pure zari sari, there will be a zari authentication certificate. And if it's a pashmina, we provide a pashmina lab report with every pashmina stole that we sell. Our saris are handloom marked, and we, for the silk saris, we provide the silk mark tags. So this is to really drive a lot of authenticity and transparency.
Our product tags are the most detailed ones in the industry, and you can have all the information which is very transparent, and we put it out there for our customers. We are embedding sustainability in everything that we do, so when it comes to sustainability of the environment, we are insisting on eco-friendly dyes from our vendors. We're transitioning to sustainable cotton that uses 40% less water. We have a very strong portfolio of plant-based fibers. We are crazy about sustainability of crafts, so we are preserving and promoting the rich and diverse textile crafts of our country. We are also looking and driving sustainability of livelihoods. We care for the well-being of our weavers and artisans through, and we are empowering them through continuous employment.
So having set the tone for our brand promises and customer value proposition, let me share with you how we are really winning our customers and winning them for life, and they're becoming our fans for life. It has to start with the product portfolio, so we have just the right design-differentiated assortment for all our customers and for all the occasions in their lives. And we are appealing to all the different consumer cohorts, from the value seeker to the discerning. We are building an emotional connection with our customers, so it's not just a transaction when they make a purchase, but it's actually a relationship that we are developing for life. And we do that through embracing their regional cultural codes. We celebrate with them.
We become a part of their, you know, momentous milestones in their lives, and we allow them to express themselves fully through events like the Taneira Saree Run, which I'm going to talk about a little later. And we are also celebrating the women artisans and the women master craftsman and their role of preserving the arts. Our campaigns are very impactful, so we show... We showcase design differentiation, and we connect across generations. And our Diwali campaign, which is the largest campaign, is a very high-octane and 360-degree campaign every year. This is one example of the current campaign that we are running, and it's called Cottons of India. Let me play it for you. So we've been able to, you know, reimagine and reignite even a humble category like cotton sarees in a way that's never been done before.
With this campaign, our sales are already over 3x over last year. We are also inspiring and influencing conversations around the categories, so whether it's through the right placement to drive aspiration or harnessing influencer collabs to build relevance and endorsements, and also meaningful association and sponsorships in relevant forums. We are also building the brand as a fashion destination. So we have... We tied up with Vogue, like for example, last year, and we highlighted all the collections on Vogue last year, and we are building a fashion statement. Now, coming to winning in wedding and festive, and that's really important for us, and that's what the whole plan is.
We have the right initiatives in place for tapping this wedding opportunity, through providing the best-in-class wedding assortment in Banaras and Kanchipuram, those are the wedding clusters. From having in-store wedding zones in key markets, to having bridal master classes and wedding melas and strategic partnerships, like the one with Tanishq, wherein we engage with the customer from the moment they buy their engagement ring right up to their first anniversary. We are also providing authentic experiences to our customers through events, through our affiliate media, like WedMeGood and Bridal Asia.
We have the relevant assortment for every wedding festivity, and wedding is a ceremony that lasts many days, and there are many events, so we have the right assortment for every wedding festivity and every wedding event, and we want to be the go-to place for all wedding purchases for our customers. We're also allowing customers to post their, you know, pictures or their momentous occasions during the wedding ceremony on our social handles, and they are doing that with a lot of pride, wearing Taneira sarees for their key events. India is a land of festivals, and we are celebrating every festival with great pomp and show. We bring out 15 different capsules for regional festivals, and we have over 200 designs for the Diwali collection, which is our the biggest one.
We work with a lot of local influencers who act as catalysts in crafting candid conversations in regional languages as well. This is our campaign for last year, and it was a runaway success.
Designer sarees, handcrafted in Pioso, the Queen's collection from Taneira, a Tata product.
It's not just Diwali. So we are. This is an example of how we are celebrating all the festivals across the country, whether it's Onam in the south to Pujo in Bengal. And we have, we bring out collections suited for these regional festivals as well. And that's how we are acquiring customers for life and making them really our fans for life. And we have a very strong store-led customer acquisition programs which are driving acquisition as well as retention. So whether it is Taneira at Home, wherein our retail staff actually takes the shortlisted sarees, which have been shortlisted through a video call with the customers, to the homes of our customers, and they then make their final choice in the comfort of their homes.
We're doing a lot of apartment pop-up activities in the vicinity of our stores to drive awareness. We celebrate their birthdays, anniversaries, and not only that, we engage them with a lot of craft activities in store. When it's new product launches, we involve our customers so they become a part of the launch. Apart from that, we are also doing a lot of digi-local lead gen and influencer marketing to drive awareness, acquisition, and retention. This is one great example. It's an industry first, where we are amplifying awareness with our Taneira Saree Run. Some more in the video.
Cheers to the Taneira Saree Run, baby!
So, we've done 5 such saree runs, 2 in Bangalore, 1 in Kolkata, 1 in Pune, and another one in Hyderabad. The atmosphere is really buzzing. It's lots of energy. What we are trying to portray here is that, you know, saree is not a, you know, limiting garment, it's actually a garment, but it's actually a liberating garment. That's how the customers are rewarding us. So with 89 NPS, we believe that it's the best in the industry, a 4.9 Google rating, a 70% conversion of walk-in customers, and 40% repeat for our Taneira stores. These are metrics that we're really very proud of.
So now, how we are building this business for scale now that we have our customers who just love our brand, our products, and they love the whole experience of, of, you know, having been associated with us. And that comes... The first lever is the store footprint, and if you see in FY 2022 exit, we were at 20 stores, in FY 2024, we exited with 74 stores, and we have plans to add 25-30 stores every year for the next few years. And we are strengthening our presence in metros. So, if you see, in Hyderabad, in FY 2022, we had just 1 store, and today we have 6. In Kolkata, in FY 2022, we didn't have even a single store. Today, we have 4.
So we are focusing on driving a lot of populating a lot of stores in the metros, and we're focusing on market share gain in metros first, and then we go to Tier Two and Tier Three. We have increased our average store size from 2,500 to 3,000 to 3,500 sq ft with a very impactful facade. We are very focused on driving an asset-light model, so by the end of this year, we will have 80% of our store, which are franchisee stores. The second lever is looking at and exploiting portfolio opportunities that exist within the women's ethnic wear category. So apart from sarees, we are now focusing also on kurtas, kurta sets and lehengas, and we believe we have a role to play there and a role.
That is going to help us bring a lot of scale to our business. The third lever is providing access price points, and we are providing some delightful prices, starting prices across categories, to recruit a lot of customers and expose them to the brand. This is, we are already set on this journey, and it's yielding some great results. We are driving a lot of innovation across different areas of our business to drive scale. The whole open browsing experience is, again, an industry first, wherein a customer can browse through our entire collection in the store without any help.
We bring out the best of India under one roof, which is also an industry-first initiative, and through an endless aisle, our customers can shop through seamlessly across online and offline channels. We are collaborating with a lot of tech startups in our supply chain area. So whether it is to provide a weavers app, so that we have a good visibility on production status, and our sourcing team and design team can you know communicate with the weavers directly, and the weavers can also keep a check on their statement of account. Another startup we are working on is on demand planning and store replenishment, and that's so very critical in a category like this, where the supply chain is so broken, the back end is so broken, it's fragmented and unorganized.
We are trying to put some method in the madness. We have another startup that we are working is on warehouse management system, because we are, at any point of time, we are working with over 200,000 SKUs, and that can be very complex. And with the fourth startup that we're working is to improve our last mile delivery and visibility in that area. Now, this is a program in the supply chain area, which we are really very, very proud of, is the Weavers hala program, and it is fostering weaving excellence. We are upgrading the weavers' infrastructure for our weavers' workplace, and we are actually uplifting their lives. And I have a video I would like to share. Yeah. Thank you.
I, I believe it's our responsibility to modernize the back end for this category, and this is our FY 2027 ambition, is to be a INR 1,000 crore brand at UCP, and we believe we are well on our journey to achieve that. Thank you. My time's up. I hope you enjoyed the ride. Thanks.
Morning. Am I audible? Yeah. I'll begin with a brief update from where I left two years back. We set a goal for ourselves of 40% growth on top line in FY 2023 and 50% for EBIT. We pretty much delivered that. We ended the year at INR 1,100 crore and an all-time high of EBIT, about almost 100 crore. That was FY 2023. Coming to FY 2024, it has been a year of many innovations and experiments. We launched five powerful new products, starting with Zephyr, our foray into luxury frame segments, and soon to follow with sunglasses. Two new variants came in our smart sunglass category, Gen 2 version of EyeX and Vibes.
Two new lenses, one for comfortable driving, particularly in the night, and an affordable version of our best progressive lens called Ultima, at a price of INR 25,000. These five products made a big impact. If I were to tell you that their contribution in the last six months since we have launched during the last Independence Day, most of our innovation stories are brought to the market around Independence Day. Contribution is about 15%, significant enough. We took a baby step towards integrating audiology into our clinical expertise. Eight of our stores today are equipped to do diagnostics and eventually sell hearing aids. Good start there again. While the world of retail, more specifically, optical world, is obsessed with upselling and cross-selling, we are actually pretty much, you know, obsessed with the idea of honest selling.
Now we have a, you know, a homegrown tool, what's called, you know, to sort of identify any deviation in any transaction that you have made in order to make sure customer gets just the appropriate solution, notwithstanding whatever we want to sell. Yeah? So that's something like an industry first, and I think we are considering filing it for patent. As much as we are strong on innovation in the area of products and processes, we have been pretty inventive when it comes to communication. Time permitting, I'll show you one of our most successful campaign of last year. As far as internal e-com channel is concerned, thanks to last two, three years of, you know, perseverance, I would say, this channel is growing at the rate of 3X.
And we are playing a pioneering role when it comes to smart glasses, and as you look at the numbers, clearly, this is a category on the rise, and we are in the pole position. You know we are international, and Dinu will talk about it a lot more. We have 4 stores in UAE now, and if I were to sum up the last year, FY 2024, we had a brilliant first half. First half, we almost had high double-digit growth, pretty much as per our plan. It is the quarter three, which kind of derailed us. The festival season got split into 2 months, did not help our cause. As a result, we ended up the year with a modest growth of 5%. This is our top-line trend. We ended last year at INR 1,161 crore, and this is the EBIT trend.
Two takeaways from here: we have wiped out our 13 years of accumulated loss. Now we are net positive. And if you look at the slice of last four years, our profit figures only have improved. Margin declined last year. What I'm trying to say here is that we have built a solid foundation of a business. The way we are going to look at the future is on this foundation today. The opportunity that we are going to talk about is, frankly, nothing new. It has not dramatically shifted overnight, but what has changed is the lens through which we are looking at it. You are familiar with these numbers. Multiple times, we spoke about 55 crore Indians need vision correction, 20 crore in the category, multiple reasons why more people will come to the category.
I'll leave all these aside, focus on the last one. Currently, there are about 8-10 crore people every year in the market buying prescription eyewear. Contrast that with what we do. We sell through our Titan Eye Plus retail chain to about 15 lakh, 1.5 million people, 2% market share. That is the first thing to note. If you go further, little more in deep, look at the single vision market, which in a way represents the youth. There are about 5.5 crore-6 crore pairs of lenses being sold every year. We sell 6 lakhs. Overall percentage is about 1%, but look at the top two layers. We are about 20%, you know, our share is about 20% in that.
We are playing in that space, but 90% of the market is below INR 1,000. Like it or not, whatever is the hype about the industry, about multiple billions that is being projected, this is the real truth. Now, looking at the progressive lens segment, this is complex, okay? Roughly about 10,000,000 pairs of lenses are being dispensed every year, and 95% of this segment, this, you know, progressive lenses, are below INR 6,000 price point. And the top two layers, we have almost 1/3 market share, which in a way is a testimony of our technical competence, capability, and prowess in the area of design, manufacturing of lens, understanding and depth of optometry. That said, the bulk of the market is where we are hardly relevant. Now, let's move to non-prescription segment, the lifestyle segment, which is sunglasses.
Market size is estimated to be INR 3,000 crore or more. Doesn't matter whether INR 3,000 or INR 4,000 crore, our share is less than 10% even there, and we have only one brand delivering about INR 200 crore. There is a huge play of volume growth happening at below INR 750, and like every other, you know, lifestyle product, you know, the premiumization is anyway happening. We sell other brands through our retail stores. We have 900+ stores. If you look at the top 108 stores, last year, we did a revenue of INR 302 crore, which means 12% of my network does about 40% of sale. Now, at INR 300 crore, this 108 stores would mean this is the single largest premium retail chain in the country.
No one comes even near it, yeah? And this is one segment which is unaffected by any economic volatility and is growing. And it'll be interesting for you to know that we are serving who's who of the country without necessarily chasing, but we are also surprised when we saw the images of various customers in many of our stores. I would talk about the challenge a bit, meaning last year, we suddenly experienced a bit of a headwind, especially in the quarter three, and the main issue was slow customer growth, right? As much as we did our, you know, internal soul searching, we also did market research, and through the consumer research, what came out is loud and clear. We are seen as clearly an expert, but we are also seen as expensive. We are trusted, but less fashionable.
In short, we are not delivering great economic value to customers, more specifically, young, younger lot. So given the size of the market, 8-10 crore people are buying every year, given that we have built very strong competence in some areas, given that our market share is only this much, given that certain lifestyle category, we have only played very, very limited game, we have come up with a four-prong strategy that would, in a way, build the future that we want to really dream of. First is to bring parity, specifically price parity, in the affordable fashion economic segment. This is actually highly commoditized. Lenses are being produced in millions in China. Everybody buys it from China. There is no room for differentiation.
Let's be honest, we probably have not paid enough attention to that segment, in a way, made competition's life a lot easier. We, we heard our customers, we are making a significant shift here, and we believe we'll acquire a lot more customers, and more specifically, younger lot. Progressive lens business is a complex business. It is a multifocal game, right? You have to adjust for multiple focal length issues of a customer. It needs competence, it needs expertise, it also needs certain heightened sense of customer orientation, because every customer goes through a unique journey of adaptation. Speaking for myself, I'm wearing progressive for last 12-14 years, and every time I change a lens, it's a unique journey, and I can...
I'm sure if I ask my friends who are wearing progressive lenses, they would probably agree with me that this is not an easy, easy, easy category to get into. So we have built, probably in the country, as a network, we have the best competence, best capability to exploit this segment. So rightfully so, we believe we should lead this category. It is obvious that we need to have a greater share in sunglasses category, and we'll accelerate the premiumization of our 108 stores so that we sit on top of the retail pyramid in the optical industry. Foundation remains the same. Expertise and empathy will continue to drive us. This strategy has come into play, meaning we have concluded on this sometime by end of December, and we started taking action around this.
First and foremost, what we did is, we revamped our complete frame portfolio with very high level of trust on fashion. Today, if you walk into any of our store, by and large, I think the first impression that you would get, it would be probably quite different than what you would have seen six months back. We simplified our lens menu, rationalized prices, both for single vision as well as for progressive lenses. Some cases, the drop has been as high as 50%. And we launched our latest you know progressive lens is called Initia, at a killer price of INR 1,250. I would really wonder who will give you a lens of the quality that we claim at the price of INR 1,250. Of course, there are people who are giving you free progressives.
If you have not checked, you should check it out, and maybe you will unravel some mystery from, from that as well. When it comes to sunglasses, we are getting into multiple layers. We just launched our these range of sunglasses at a price point of INR 600, exclusively for e-com channel, and on the other extreme end, we have launched our Aristo sunglasses, which is 18-karat gold sunglasses. Whatever we could manage to supply before Akshaya Tritiya, 50% of it got sold out in four days time. So in short, what I'm trying to say, and rest of it is happening in WAP, as we are playing all the way. Not only that, we are entering into premium sunglasses retail through a new format called Runway.
First, this is the image of our nearly ready store in Terminal One of Delhi Airport, and probably two weeks time, it will be operational. 30 million people are expected to walk through this corridor. Once we got our house in order, product portfolio corrected, pricing altered, we started a 360-degree campaign, talking about affordable fashion through print, including vernacular, digital influencers.
Get frames plus BlueSafe lenses at INR 1,500 at your nearest Titan Eyewear store, or online at titaneyewear.com.
I think I'm in love, love, love. Red flag! My bad habits lead us both to crash into the ground. Red flag! Something save us, loose but we're strangers. Feel like we're far apart. Gotta go and grab a tune now. Ooh, save a life for myself. Ooh, I don't know what I'm gonna do now. Ooh, but I don't need your help. Get out of my way, my way, I'm moving on up. Don't make me to stay, to stay. I'm done being stuck. Get out of my way, my way, I'm moving on up. The last thing I will ever do for you is wish you the best of luck. La, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, la, la. La, la, la, la.
This is our latest launch, we said truly progressive at INR 1,250. It is making wave for the customers who are looking for progressive solution. And here I would like to sum up the changes that we have made. Today, we have a anti-reflective lens at INR 500 rupees. We have a blue lens at INR 750 rupees. We've got a progressive of INR 1,250 rupees. And our frame, with the good range and style, starts at INR 750. So in other words, a HMC specs, meaning anti-reflective specs, you can get it at INR 1,250 in Titan, INR 1,500 rupees BlueSafe, and a progressive solution at INR 2,000 rupees. So that's the sum and substance of all the changes that we have made, and it is seen. As I speak, our network is also undergoing a major facelift.
More and more of our stores are going to look like this, new age, trendier, youthful. The premium store that I spoke about are going to look even more premium with high-end clinic. Clinic investment itself is INR 30 lakh, just the equipment, and a very different way of display of our merchandise. All that is kind of in phase manner is in deployment, and April is the first month where I would say the all the four are in action. I'll give you a glimpse of some early results. Affordable fashion segment, we are almost doubling, at the rate of double that we are growing. Progressive buyer, single vision buyer, sunglass buyer, all of which you can see the trend. Quarter three struggle, thereafter, the kind of the hockey stick effect that you are seeing.
Overall buyer growth is a healthy 12% that we haven't seen in many, many, many quarters. So in short, whatever we thought are the strategies are showing that we are on the right track. A little bit about our other channels. Distribution channels struggled big time last year, no two ways about it. So therefore, we also decided that instead of changing thousands of dealers, we'll focus on the top thousand dealer and make something worthwhile for both sides. And this is an industry that distribution channel is a little, I would say they got way too much of, you know. And coming back to marketplace, we are talking to our partners. We are getting our house in order all over again.
Years back, we did it in watches, and you can see where e-com channel of watches has reached today. It is a similar arrangement we are working with both the partners. I think they also see the merit of what we are saying, and while another couple of months will be spent in getting this done, numbers will follow thereafter. Internal e-com, we have done well, and my guess is that we'll continue the momentum. INR 30 crore investment is envisaged in the area of capacity and capability building, more for our back end. As far as the new things are concerned, runway stores, you saw one. Second one is committed to open by the end of this month itself, June. Four more stores, altogether, about 6 stores before Diwali, hopefully, otherwise, end of the year.
And we are selling hearing aids through 8 stores. We sold. We screened 500 people. Many of them are a captive audience, which is the reason that we adopted this as a possible, you know, synergy. you know, option of synergy. 500 people screened, 100 hearing aids sold. It's about INR 1 crore. Number is not big, but as I said, I'm not making any extra effort. It is my same customer needing more than one solution. And expanding to 20 stores. By the end of September, we will look at the big picture and decide our play. Dinu is going to cover most of the international. I think I know for sure that 6 more stores are getting added to UAE and. We are exploring 2 more countries.
With all that, we believe, we will cross a, you know, we'll exceed a top line of INR 2,000+ crore by FY27, with an EBIT margin of 12%. Thank you. This is all I had to say, and I'll leave you behind with our most, you know, spoken about viral campaign of last year. Many of you would have seen it. Thank you.
Hi! So, guys, any weekend plans?
Is it me you talking to?
Yes, it is real. As real as it can get.
... Yeah, thanks. Back to Nina.
Yeah, prank. Yeah, screen screen, prank.
Yeah, possible.
Goa plan possible. Where are you going? Advice to option smart Titan EyeX smart glasses.
For me, unbelievable. I'm talking to you.
Unbelievable. Built-in step counter, navigation or music, Fastrack Vibe 2.2 smart glasses. Smart for logo, guys. But you know what? They are way smarter than me.
Yeah, now I'm feeling dumb.
I felt the same, bro, when I thought you said a regular sunglasses. But no, sunglasses. You can take calls. You can listen to music. Titan Eye+ care, Neo Sync progressive lenses. Comfortable. Check out Zephyr luxury frames at Titan Eye+, made in France and feels like a gentle breeze. Yeah, it DriveEz from Titan Eye+. It lens make feature a draft make same way. Vehicles gear.
Selfie.
Selfie. Selfie. Believe me, believe me, I have to talk to you. So anyway, let's take it.
Hello and good morning. Delighted to be here today and to present on behalf of the Watches and Wearables Division. So in 2024, we are celebrating the iconic milestone of 40 years of the incorporation of Titan Company, and watches is where it all started. So, on this 40th milestone year, we have a very exciting plan for Watches and Wearables Division. I'll start first with the net sales value trend over the last many years. If you see in this chart from FY 2015 to FY 2020, it took us that many years to grow from about INR 1,800 crores to INR 2,085 crores of net sales value, with CAGR of 3%.
This is also important because at that point, we really believed that the watch market, analog watch market, we have a very high market share and the headroom for growth is low. Interestingly, it was when COVID hit in FY 2020, FY 2021 and, and to an extent FY 2022, when, you know, the dip happened, it actually gave us time to reflect and to size the market and to see it with an entirely new lens. And that, which I will present to you now, led us to really evaluate what are the opportunities, what is our current market share, and where can we envisage huge growth areas.
This has led us to moving from INR 2,187 crores NSV in FY 2022 to last year's INR 3,740 crores, which translates to the consumer price, which is what internally we look at, of more than INR 5,800 crores of revenue. So this was the last two years with a CAGR of 31%, and last year was a 19% growth. And this was particularly interesting and impressive in a year when overall a lot of consumer and especially discretionary and lifestyle categories faced a lot of headwinds. So like I said, it was in the low, in the depth, you know, times of lows, which was 2021, 2022, when we crafted the INR 10,000 crore, and this is a net UCP, not the NSV what I said, revenue ambition.
I had shared it as a big goal, a big dream, like a North Star for our division, the last time we had met in the investor meet, two years back. Then we started building the strategy, which I will take you through. In 2023, 2024, we realized the strategy also needs the adequate structure, for it to be fully executed and implemented. This year, we are in the very good position where the strategy is clear, the structure is in place, and now we are going towards execution and synergy. The DNA of the Watches and Wearables division is about opportunity spotting, and the big opportunities are premium, women, Gen Z. It's not like these have not been there, but the real explosion of opportunity has led us to get significant more revenue and market share.
The other big DNA is on innovation, and I will take you through how product innovation, channel innovation, and the manufacturing backbone, ISCM is integrated supply chain and manufacturing, is at an unbelievable level of constantly improving and innovating. And the last one is value extraction, which is how do we get more out of the same, and to really unleash operating leverage. So these are the three big opportunity segments. Premium, I think more has been spoken about, spoken about premiumization. I don't really need to talk about it. But in terms of watches as a category, we are seeing clear premiumization, and this is going to continue for the next many years. Women. Women, consumers in India have been very kind to us.
We've built a lot of equity, and now it is time to actually serve them in completely new ways, and you will see this in my presentation, both in, in all of the segments that I cover, that we are focusing on women, Indian women consumers, in a big way. And the last one is Gen Z, which is the youth. Gen Z is a very interesting cohort. They were actually born and raised in a digital age, and consequently, the way they think, the way they behave, is fundamentally different and they like to shop online, of course. The beautiful thing is that they are very open to experimentation, and they are constantly exploring and embracing new brands.
So this is really the context of the Indian consumers landscape, which have kind of informed all of our strategy decisions going ahead. So as I said earlier, it was last financial year, 2023-24, when we reorganized. So structurally now, we have got three different business verticals: mainline analog, which is really all watches below 25,000 consumer price; premium analog; and smart. And now there are distinct teams with, you know, operating heads who are responsible for all of the, the initiatives under these three. I will start with mainline analog. In fact, this particular chart shows the structure and the size of the analog watch market. As I mentioned earlier, we have traditionally operated in the 1-5K and the 5,000-25,000 watch price point.
In these two, as you can see, we actually have almost a 50%, if not more, market share. But what has happened in the last few years is that the less than 1,000, which is a very affordable fashion kind of segment, it's a huge pie in terms of volume, almost 46 million. Not very high, obviously, in terms of value. But there we have a lower market share. We did not have any kind of playbook that can play there profitably. And I think most interestingly, above 25,000, these are estimates, we really don't know, but we know that this has grown very rapidly post-COVID. In the last three or four years, it's grown at a very high growth rates. And there also, we have a very small market share.
So obviously, our strategy is to strengthen where we are already strong and gain more and more market share, as well as make inroads in the other two segments, the mass fashion, as well as in premium, where there seems to be a lot of headroom. I will move into mainline analog. Like I said, these are all the watches, analog watches below INR 25,000. There are three key levers here that have been working and that we continue to work. The first is premiumization. As I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of product innovation that has powered this premiumization game for us in the last two or three years. This is an example of a watch, Titan Meteorite from the Stellar series. This is priced at INR 120,000. We made 300 pieces, and we are sold out.
This is a really impressive achievement for a brand like Titan, which is seen as very trusted, but mid-range, to be able to, you know, get consumers who queue up to buy this. There is a lot packed into this watch, and this is an important thing, that it's not just that the kind of watch we make at INR 15,000, 20,000, 30,000 and the kind of watch we make at INR 120,000, there is a dial crafted from a 120,000-year-old meteorite. And of course, it has a bespoke automatic caliber. When I'm talking about the movements, it's a lot of in-house R&D that has powered this. The amount of focus on horology, and especially on material and movement, is the foundation in which this product innovation is being built. Some more examples.
This is a ceramic fusion watch, where there is a play of ceramic and metal, and also a very impressive movement. These are some more watches from the Titan Stellar collection, which was launched last Diwali. There is the watch on the right, which is an aventurine dial, which has got a very shimmering kind of look, which goes very well with this astronomy-themed collection, and also Titan's in-house automatic caliber. Premiumization is not just being seen in Titan; it is also quite evident in a youth brand like Fastrack. Last year, we launched Fastrack Automatics at INR 10,000. We had never actually launched anything about INR 5,000 or INR 6,000 in Fastrack before that, and we were surprised at the kind of response it had. Of course, it has a unique Fastrack look with a very unique brown plating.
Again, our own in-house movement. Premiumization is also being played out through our portfolio of international brands. We have brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Kenneth Cole. Last year, we launched this brand called Cerruti 1881. It's French, though it sounds Italian, and it's at a very good price point of about INR 28,000-INR 40,000. It has done exceptionally well and is now scaling up very rapidly. So other than the house brands, international brands is playing a very big role in the premiumization journey. Premiumization is also being played out in the channels. As many of you would know, we sell through multiple channels. We have our exclusive brand outlets, Titan World, which has about 630-odd stores right now, Fastrack stores, which has...
where we have about 225 stores, and Helios, which is currently about 240 stores. Other than that, we are present in large format departmental stores like Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Reliance Trends, et cetera. We are also present in more around 8,000 multi-brand outlets. About 1,000 of them are actually also selling premium products. So these are the many places where we are selling our premium products, and the focus is now on experience and storytelling, because, as you saw, the products are very much there. The Titan World chain has literally transformed itself. Pre-COVID, it used to be called World of Titan, and the name change is not a mere name change. We have done significant renovation.
It's a completely new, modern, international, and I would say, overall, the look is very, very different. We have, out of the total number of stores, 70% have already been renovated, and of course, all new stores are coming up in the new look. There is a big service to retail focus. After-sale service is seriously a secret sauce for us. We have 2.5 million service consumers who walk into these stores for their after-sale service, and that is a huge, you know, customer acquisition tool. And the last one is lead generation. Very interesting that we have, on our websites and our apps, last year, we had 80 million people who visited. That is an amazing number for a standalone, like a brand website stroke app.
These 80 million, only a fraction actually, complete the transaction online, but this is a very powerful source, again, of customer lead generation, and many of these are going into our EBOs, into Titan World. Next, I move into Helios, which has been a sensational success story in the last 3-4 years. It's India's largest multi-brand premium watch chain right now. Like I said, about 240 stores. We have a lot of Swiss brands, and they're doing very well, again, indicative of the overall premiumization trend. The combination of Helios and Titan World under one roof, what we internally call destination store, and we have about 150+ such stores in the country, are really powering the growth of the category.
I think it gives the unique, in one place, under one roof, to have, the best of international brands under Helios, including Swiss, and the best of Titan, in the Titan World in the adjacent Titan World. The next big lever is Raga. Raga is a beloved brand of Indian women, has come a long way. Last year, we crossed a landmark of INR 5,000 crore, but that's again, UCP, will roughly translate to about INR 370 crore of NSV. One of the biggest and most exciting and loved women's brands in India. Please have a look. So Raga is going from strength to strength, and we hope to double the turnover in the next 2-3 years. Next, I move to mass fashion. We have brands like Fastrack and Sonata.
Last year, we faced a lot of headwinds in these two brands, and somewhere around the middle of the year, we launched two sub-brands, Vibe by Fastrack, which is only for young women, and Pose by Sonata, which is for both men and women. These watches, these two brands, sub-brands, have done exceptionally well, mainly in the multi-brand outlets as well as in marketplace e-com. They offer exceptional fashion at very affordable prices. At the same time, we are also looking at reinventing Sonata, which has been the affordable brand. But now we find that the consumer truth is that people want fashion more than a very robust quality. Of course, quality is important, but in the general wave, the whole proposition of Sonata as well as Fastrack is becoming more fashion-forward.
These two brands sell mainly through the two channels of MBRs, which is multi-brand outlets, as well as marketplace e-com. Just a couple of points. Our MBRs are decades-old mom-and-pop watch stores and have actually faced the brunt of multiple waves of headwinds. One is a general move towards online. The second is, with the kind of huge uplift of look and feel and customer experience that our EBOs are going through, the MBOs were tending to look a little dated. And so what we've done is we've undertaken a program called MBR Transformation, and out of the 8,000-odd, the top 970 stores, we are working with the stores to improve their look and feel, A.
B, become much more digital and customer savvy and also help them, move up to higher price points than what they are currently doing. Marketplace e-commerce has been a very big lever of growth in the last two years. As you all know, post-COVID, there has been an overall adoption of e-commerce, and especially in fashion categories like watches. In the lower price points, it is really a very big playground. Very happy to share that we are right now at about t... just under 30% market share in the marketplace platforms, and we are aiming for 40% share in these platforms again in the next two to three years. Next, I move to premium.
Premium watches has been something that we have always looked from afar, but now we are in, and we are doing well, and this is how we are planning to play. We have a brand play as well as a retail play that is planned. In the brand play, and this chart actually shows premium, which is INR 25,000-INR 1 lakh. We have aspirational luxury, which is really INR 1 lakh-INR 10 lakh, but within that also, there may be some differences in absolute luxury, which is greater than INR 10 lakh. We are present with our brands, Edge and Xylys, in the premium brand play. We are present in the retail play through Helios.
In aspirational luxury, where, you know, the other brands, the big brands are already, you can see on the screen, our brand play is Nebula, and I will talk about a new retail play, called Project Zeus, that is coming up in the aspirational luxury, and a bit of absolute luxury in the retail side. So these are our brands for the premium side. And these three brands are now, you know, with the premium business vertical coming up, they have completely unleashed and are raring to go. Edge has been a Titan trademark for more than 20 years. It's completely now in a different growth path. Of course, the slim movement, but with the new age material of ceramic, it has become something else. It's a force to reckon with and a lot of design and innovation.
Nebula is our 18-carat gold range, and it speaks of Indian heritage, precious metal, which is gold and precious stones, and craftsmanship. And Xylys, which is our Swiss offering from the House of Titan, very bold in design and of course stands for Swiss. So they... The three different brands are actually occupying three different mind spaces in the premium watch category. I will take you through two short videos, which will kind of showcase the essence of the brands Edge and followed by Nebula. That's Edge for you, and this is enter the world of Nebula. Next, I move on to Project Zeus. So multi-brand premium watch retail in India is very is there. It's been there for a long time, and we have the big chains.
What we were looking at is which are the growing but currently underserved segments, and we came up with these three. The first is called HEART, which stands for High Earning And Ready to Treat. Internationally, there is a segment called HENRY, which is H-E-N-R-Y, standing for High Earning And Not Rich Yet. And we just felt that's not a good place. We converted it to HEART, and HEART actually describes our customer very well. These are a lot of young people in this country who have a lot of money. They are in their mid-thirties, forties. They are new entrants. They are not people who are born to old wealth. They are creating their own wealth. They are well-traveled, well-read, and they are spending a lot of money in new categories of like watches, like footwear, like alcohol.
So there are a lot of things that these young people are expressing their personality with. And, you know, I'm very happy that watches, premium watches, is very much high up on that list. The second is women. Women are less than 10% of the premium watch market. They're not really welcomed, and we also don't have a very large representation of watches, products, and seller sales staff in the premium watch outlets. And the third is wedding. And we know, as Titan Company, how big wedding is as an opportunity and to really cater to wedding customers, who often come in groups, and their whole buying process is different. So we are using these levers to create the Zeus proposition. Zeus is a current working title.
We will soon, when we launch the first store, come out with the name that we've chosen. But the idea in Zeus, it's going to be multi-brand. We will have a curated set of brands. Almost all are Swiss, from INR 2 lakhs to INR 20 lakhs. Very different customer experience, immersive in-depth storytelling, large areas dedicated for customer engagement. It's designed by an international London-based agency. And I think the third pillar of warm, inclusive, insightful, and supportive customer experience, which is particularly useful, critical for the HEART consumer, who may not be that informed about the world of premium watches. So this is really our plan. The first store is actually coming up in Mumbai in the next 3 or 4 months, and our plan is to launch 3 stores in this financial year. Finally, I come to smart.
Of course, this is a completely different world, and this is where the industry landscape is. If you see the first row of figures, this is incredible growth. 11.6 million pieces in 2021, moving to 30 million around 2022, and crossing 50 million pieces in 2023. But that is the volume growth, but look at the value growth. So what has happened is that there have been a lot of players who've rushed in, and we have had this situation in the average consumer price trend line, which has crashed from INR 2,410 to INR 1,532 in a matter of one year. This is really the situation. It's a volatile situation.
There's a price war going on, a lot of undercutting, a lot of inventory built up in the system. I mentioned it in the last investor call, too. Low differentiation among products of various brands and a very high e-commerce dependence. This is the current situation. If I go move to the next slide, I will take you through what is happening in competition. This, the first table, is from data from IDC, which is International Data Corporation, which typically compiles data of all electronics categories. IDC is showing us these are the top five. This is from April 2023 to March 2024 for the entire financial year. As you can see that, Titan at number four is the one brand that's growing and growing very healthily. Having...
We've, of course, gained many market share points, but the point is that it is a critical, an inflection point in this, in this, category. IDC is also predicting volumes not to grow. It is a place where there will be correction, and there will be a very big opportunity for Titan Company, when the dust settles. So what is our strategy? We are doing what we do best, and really, those are the long-lasting pillars of success. Design and brand, we have the best in India. Technology edge, we are also building a lot more technology through partnerships. As you know, we had taken some, a small stake in a company called CueZen, which is working with us on different algorithms, et cetera.
Also, with Philips and Polar, these are technology industry associations we have. And channels, which is other than the online, which is really where a lot of this is getting sold, to really leverage on ground channels, which we are, you know, in a unique position to have a lot of dominance on. Sorry. So these are in Fastrack, which is in the lower price points. These are some of our products which are coming up. As you can see, there is a shift towards a lot of more, quote-unquote, "watch-looking products" and a lot of fashion coming in. So this is really what is happening on Fastrack. For brand Titan, and Titan Fastrack is actually all of that market share was mostly Fastrack that you saw.
For brand Titan, which is at a mid-premium price point, we expect that after the correction in the market, there will be a lot more demand for mid-premium, high quality, high technology products, which is when the Titan game will really amp up. And for that, we have a whole host of things that are differentiating, whether it is premium materials, faster display, watch faces, technology, partnerships, unique strap offerings, AMOLED screens. So all of this is going to come in and give a differentiated and premium offering to smartwatch consumers. So if I calculate, you know, I talked about how the volumes have grown in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Almost 100 million people, Indians, have bought smartwatches.
Maybe a large percentage will come back and buy their second purchase, and the second time around, they're going to buy a high-quality product. So these are some of the Titan launches that are geared up, Heritage, Maestro, and Elixir. Elixir is for women. This is at a strong differentiation on the design. And on channel play, like I mentioned, marketplace e-com, where a lot of it continues, but actually, IDC also reports that in the last quarter, the share of online, of on-ground has gone up. The share of online has actually gone down. So we are very pleased. We will continue the momentum with our marketplace e-com partners. We will double down on on-ground channels with execution excellence and conversions in retail, multi-brand outlets and LFS.
Mobile distribution, which is a whole new game for us, we just started it a few months back. We are gearing up for a significant scale-up, so that people who enter mobile stores will also get access to our brands and products. So that's really on the whole strategy. This is where we are, this milestone in the journey. The ambition that we had talked about, which is INR 10,000 crore net UCP, which roughly translates to INR 6,500 crore NSP, continues to inspire us. It is a very big North Star for thousands of people in the division. As you saw, growth levers of mainline analog, premium analog, and smart have been established. Now, as a division, we are focusing on margin delivery of 12%-14%. That's the band that we are looking at.
This will also come through advertising cost, focus, and variable overheads cost. We know that in order to get the kind of 19% growth that we did last year, we actually spent almost double that in advertising. Our brands are very strong and powerful. In fact, in the last 1.5-2 years, Titan brands' brand metrics have just risen, and it's really now time to, you know, leverage that powerful momentum of our brands. We will leverage all assets to the fullest. We've launched an internal program called Project Alchemy, which is to look at every last, you know, asset we have and squeeze everything out of it. And overall, my entire team and our entire ecosystem of partners, distributors, watch dealers, vendor partners, CFAs across the length and breadth...
In fact, partners across the countries, across countries also, we are all geared up to go and achieve this dream. Thank you very much.
If there are some people outside, if you could request them, too. After some very exciting presentations and beautiful videos and imagery, it's time for us to look at what the jewelry business has to share. Welcome once again to the Investor Day here, and the last time we met was about two years ago, and I remember sharing with you that, you know, we had taken a goal for FY 2023 of a 30% growth over FY 2022, and a 2.5x on FY 2022 to FY 2027. Happy to share that we have been able to achieve those goals and well on course for the FY 2027 numbers as well. What's more and what's new?
We have seen, you know, amidst significant competitive intensity and action, about which I'll cover a little later, a very, very good CAGR in the last five years, a 19% CAGR, and even the studded revenue has been at 18%. The studded ratio has marginally dipped, but that's because there's been growth in both the gold and the studded businesses, and we are beginning to see them as two businesses, not just one business or not just a ratio. We are also very proud to report healthy growth in volumes, and the way we measure volumes, as we've shared, is on buyers. There's been a 13% CAGR. These numbers are excluding CaratLane. Right now, with CaratLane, the numbers go up a couple of percentage points. Same-store growth has also been pretty good.
I don't have a CAGR on same-store growth, but in the last year, we had about a 15% CAGR growth on Tanishq, which also augurs very well. In terms of the market and the way our market share has been in the last five years, we were around the 4.5% of the market. This is again excluding CaratLane figures for now, and that has nearly doubled over the last five years. The market itself has grown. Most of the market has grown on the back of a gold price increase and some amount of action on the studded play. Our share gain strategy has worked. All the engines of growth have fired, and despite the very growing and intense competitive activity from existing and new players, we have stayed the course.
We had said we'll try to gain by 1% market share year-on-year, and that's a progress that we've been making and reporting. You all are all familiar with the growth engines. I think Venkat has already established that over the several years. We added a couple newer ones, which is core and digital. Even these have progressed very well. All, all the engines have fired pretty well. In fact, everything is on plan or better than plan. Nothing is below plan. Even you know, something like store expansion or high-value studded. High-value studded, interestingly, and solitaires, I've clubbed them, they've seen a fluctuation. The initial couple of years from FY 2019 through COVID saw some stress, but last three years, we've been seeing a fantastic growth there as well.
Having said that, the definitions of high-value studded in my mind are changing. We used to always say INR 2 lakh plus, but now I think the high values should be INR 5 lakh plus. But to stay consistent with what we have shared in the past, we've kind of retained that definition here. We are certainly seeing even more traction in the INR 5 lakh plus and INR 10 lakh plus, in line with the premiumization of the market. A lot of good work has happened in regional markets, and I've clubbed wedding and regional, as you see, because there's a high correlation. The markets where we have gone intense in terms of regionalization, whether it is Tamil Nadu, whether it is Andhra Pradesh, whether it is West Bengal-...
Or some of the Bharat markets, which are parts of the Hindi belt, we have seen a very high correlation with the wedding contributions also being very high there. And that, in turn, indicates that we need to go much, much more local if you want to grow the market share in those, categories. On digital, a lot of work has happened during COVID and post-COVID. Digital influence, omni, phygital, whichever way you want to call it. A lot of learning from CaratLane, which we've integrated into the, Tanishq ecosystem. And of course, customers themselves have kind of adopted digital like how? So it's been huge. I mean, even giving a multiple on this is meaningless. It's, it's just something which we have seen a massive, massive, massive increase.
I think as of last year, it's close to 10% of our contribution now. It used to be next to nothing. What has worked well? These are some of the learnings over the last few years that we have been engaged on. On the retail side, besides expansion, we've added quite a few stores, about 250 Tanishq and Mia stores and about 175 CaratLane stores in the last three years. But we've also transformed, to be precise, 89 older stores, up till FY 2024, in two years itself. And I'll walk you through some of that in terms of images, and the transformation is both in size, impact, capacity, and customer experience. As I mentioned, we see gold and studded as two segments, and, you know, you can win in both.
Just because something is growing faster or something is growing relatively slower, the ratio might impact, and that's why you saw the 30% and 29% studded ratio. But then, the massive share gain opportunity is sitting in gold-intensive markets. In markets, in regional markets, in smaller towns, in more traditional markets, even wedding is largely dominated by gold. So in a way, if we have to continue the market share journey, there is going to be an aggressive growth in gold as well. I must also share here that in the last 5 years, maybe due to the gold prices, gold coin and bullion has grown at a very aggressive rate as well. In fact, almost 2x of the average rate of the growth of the brand.
That indicates a customer reality of how much interested they are in gold, thanks to the gold prices. Gold prices have more than doubled in the last 4-5 years. As a portfolio between Tanishq, CaratLane, and Mia, many questions keep coming up saying, "You know, why do you need so many different places?" And you know, by some of you and even in the market. I must share here that a large part of Tanishq studded comes in the sub-INR 200,000 and sub-INR 100,000, in terms of sheer number of buyers. In fact, Tanishq has been the pioneer in democratizing diamonds in this country, so naturally, we have a huge customer base there.
But when you put all of these three brands together, because they appeal to different mindset and different product languages and, you know, a different approach, between us, we are able to dominate that segment. We are seeing very healthy double-digit buyer growth there, and that augurs well for us because it builds a funnel on the basis on which you can migrate customers towards high value. So this funnel is very critical. Pretty much like the core that I talked about in the previous slide. The core is very important. Sometimes we forget that while we are strong in what we are, 41% of our business comes from core. So it's very critical that we keep that nurtured and nourished well, so that we are able to create karma for the future. Inventory. So many investments have happened in the last 2-3 years.
Some investments in inventory, because that's what's helped us grow, whether it's in solitaires, high-value studded, wedding, regional markets. And in all of these, the, the turn gets diluted because the turn is not as much as in the other categories. So therefore, you will find some inventory related, but we've been able to manage capital employed through a smart combination of gold sourcing and bullion selling, et cetera, from our exchange gold. We've also invested a lot in growth, whether it is marketing, whether it is gold rate and pricing, whether it is customer offers, whether it's... And, you know, as you go regional, you need to be much more competitive. Certainly, let's say when we went into Tamil Nadu, we needed to ensure that we play a reasonably competitive game when it comes to making charges and gold rates.
Gold exchange itself has been an important driver, and certainly, these come at a cost. So there is a cost to investing in growth. There is also a cost to investing in capability building. With competitive intensity rising, we need to ensure we keep upping the game, be it on design, development, manufacturing. We've in fact added new product development centers. We've added stone sourcing capability. We have expanded the size of some of our manufacturing units as well as stone sourcing offices. We have put up labs. We have invested in ensuring that there is no contamination of naturals and LGDs across the ecosystem. Huge amounts of investments have gone there. We've done a lot of work on material innovation.
With rising gold prices, we know that it's important to solve for the customer's price point requirement, therefore, lightest weight jewelry, which requires product engineering on the one side, through a smart combination of component making, lightening, making hollow tubes, hollow bangles, reducing the quantum of gold in the overall studded product material composition, as well as in terms of, coming out with a new hard alloy, which enables us to create thinner gauge, lighter weight jewelry, but yet, you know, giving you the right quality and functional quality and aesthetic quality. A lot of work is also going on in terms of talent and talent infusion, especially not just on the front line, but also, you know, right through the value chain in bringing in new capability. We have worked with many consultants in stone setting.
We are working with a reputed player in high-value product development. So all of that requires us to keep upping the game, besides the many other investments which are very visible to us. This is what the spread looks like today, and the opportunity is huge. You know, there are about 54 or 57 towns which are the mini metros, metros in the Tier One, but there are 220-odd or 215-odd towns which are in the sub-10 lakh. Venkat talked about the huge opportunity. Today, Tier Two, Tier Three, Tier Four, and below 1 lakh population towns also, including, you know, from 10 lakh below to 1 lakh population towns, these contribute to about 30% of our top line. The CAGR, obviously, in this area, has been much higher than the average.
I think we've grown at about a 25% CAGR. There are towns, you know, while Venkat threw some at you, I'm going to read a few more. Habra in West Bengal, Bhimavaram, Nawanshahr, Udupi, Eluru, Karimnagar, Madhubani, Katihar, Munger, Buxar, Gobichettipalayam, Purnia, Korba, Khanna, Bhilwara, Malda, and the list can go on and on. Small town opportunity is huge. We also see a lot of affinity. People are wanting the Tanishq brand. We see a lot of desire in these towns because digitally connected customers are there. And more importantly, we see a lot of loyalty because those markets are genuinely underserved. People have not seen that kind of customer service, professionalism, transparency in policies, so the opportunity there is very high.
If people were going once a year to buy products from the next biggest town, now they can come two or three times in a year. So, you know, the entire ecosystem develops, because after us comes also other big organized competition, and everybody invests, and suddenly jewelry category becomes more visible. So it's, it's a very positive thing, and, we are very excited about this. A few glimpses of the retail transformation program that, that has been going on, which many of you may not be aware of, but actually, pictures speak more than what I can say. This is a store in Jaipur, on MI Road, which is a traditional market. It has a different jali, a pink jali.
You can see that the store is drawing inspiration from local crafts and the local architecture, the jharokhas out there. It's truly beautiful if you ever get a chance to go. Our Dickinson Road store has been one of our oldest stores. It was only on the ground floor, now it's got two levels, and I think we could take the third and the fourth level if we could get it, but it's not easy to get it. This is a store in Baroda. It looks like a palace, and it's our second store in Baroda, and it's outstanding. It hit the first year itself, INR 100 crore plus. Bhubaneswar, a recent launch in Chandrasekharpur. This store has taken the breath away.
Our regional business head from the east was sharing that many of the associates are saying, "Sir, Bhubaneswar, Chandrasekharpur store," you know, and some very small towns. You know, they're very excited about it. And again, you can see the infusion of local art and craft. These stores are not just bigger. On an average, these 90 stores which I'm talking about, have grown about 40%-50% in the store size. Average store size has gone up from about 4,000 to 6,000. Some stores have gone up 3x and 4x as well. So the capacity has gone up, our ability to deal with peak day sales.
Typically, you know, on a DT, Dhanteras or an Akshaya Tritiya, we might be dealing with 1-1.5 lakh customers in a day across the chain, and peak periods and peak period action is there. So managing capacities is also important, besides the impact. And the fact that each of these stores is so big, it gives us an opportunity to create a wedding zone, a high-value zone, an everyday zone, so that we are able to segment customer needs. A karigar, very nice, respectable karigar area. So a lot of things which a private viewing room, a baby care room, and so many other things that are very essential for running these stores. A customer event room as well. This is in Pandri, Raipur. I think I'd shown a pic of this last time.
This is one of our latest ones in Pondy Bazaar. By the way, this is about less than a kilometer or so away from Usman Road, which is across, which is also a huge store, and this is a huge store. And very interestingly, both stores are doing well. You know, we thought there's going to be some give and take between them, but both stores continue to do... And this one is very, very new. It's got a new format as well. But beyond the engines of growth and, and some of the things that I've shown you, there are some interesting competitive advantages that I wanted to share. I had shared a little bit about the brand narrative last year, I mean, two years ago, last time. I will share a little bit more.
The ones in blue, I'm going to cover a little bit more, so I'm not going to spend time right now. I'll talk about them during the slides... But there's a large piece around people and partnering. I think Venkat brought it alive very, very well, and I think what matters is how authentic we are with our customers, with our partners, with the frontline staff, with the Karigar community. What wonderful work that we've done in the past, reinforced very strongly during COVID. I don't know, I'll repeat it again here, that more than 1 million customers were reached out on empathy calls by our RSOs during those 2 months of lockdown. There were people who had created a spreadsheet of doctors with specializations. There was all kinds of work that happened.
Even with our Karigars, we have these total Karigar employee engagement that we do with our vendor partner, Karigars. There's an ecosystem of about 14,000 Karigars and an ecosystem of 10,000 frontline staff. So as a wholesome organization, I think it's the right thing we do. We do it because we think it's the right thing to do, but I think the benefit of that we get is, you know, the blessings of all these 25,000 people and so many other wonderful people. Our customers also, I'm sure, who get to know about what we do or who... Even if we don't, I think somewhere the goodness spreads. You know, and I don't think I can share better than what this book should be able to tell you. I have the privilege of sharing Venkat.
Venkat has authored this book on the Tanishq story. It has got amazing anecdotes. Last night, he told me to read one chapter before I do the presentation. I landed up reading the rest of the book from that particular chapter, and that was at some 12:30 or 1:00 A.M. It makes for it brings alive the culture. The anecdotes actually bring alive the reality, and I can't really do justice to this. I think I recommend all of you to pick up this book. So, you know, I think the other piece, which is very important, is this whole focus on a wholesome value chain. In the previous presentation, we had covered some elements of that, so I'm not covering it here again.
But just to give you an update, we now are water net water positive in Hosur because we've invested in 1.4 crore liters rainwater harvesting sumps inside the factory. We are, we have a Miyawaki forest of 6,000 sq ft inside the Hosur plant. We have invested in huge amount of solar power, so entire Tamil Nadu-related grid that we have invested in is going to cover up. So actually, we are moving towards a very, very sustainable thing besides all the wonderful things that Venkat spoke about. And yes, the four P framework, the Karigar Connect, and the entire transformation. I think more than 95% of our partners today have moved from cottage to basic to standard, and some are in the world-class space.
So the journey has been extremely satisfying, and we are creating another very interesting exercise in Midnapur, which is where a lot of our Karigars come from, and we are creating a world-class capability building center in Midnapur and a huge manufacturing setup. It started small. It started during COVID time when we said, "Work from home or work close to home. Why should it be only for all of us? Why not Karigars?" So it's a seed that we planted today. Hopefully, it'll become a Miyawaki forest in the future. This is a little bit about the brand narrative. I think most women, when they see some of our campaign, they say, "Tanishq gets me.
She's a superwoman. ... The client meeting is at 3:00 P.M. Have you uploaded the data? No, bye. Bye. My heart say, "Office
Chalati hai, aur right heart se ghar. Na wo apni presentation bhoolti hai, na rishtedaaron ke presents. 50th birthday.
Nahi, nahi, nahi, 24 wa pack nahi.
Din ke 24 ghanton mein wo 30 ghante ka kaam kar jaati hai.
I am done. Uski assistant ko-
Aur dusro ko hamesha khud se pehle rakhti hai.
Shh! Oh, sorry. Why?
Na woh thakti hai, na woh rukti hai.
Sab kar leti hai.
Har moment mein bas shine karti rehti hai. I mean, she's like a-
Bas karo.
Kya hua?
Saans to le lo.
Par tum to superwoman ho.
Par human bhi to hoon na?
Thank you. Thank you.
Karu beta, aage?
Haan. Haarti bhi hoon. Human hoon. Celebrating the woman in her real self, in the way in which only Tanishq can get her, is something that we feel... connects the many millions who, who really aspire for Tanishq and who love Tanishq. We spoke last time also about the way we go about connecting with our customers. Venkat spoke a little bit about it this time as well, and I showed you the many festivals and the many events that we celebrate. We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. We celebrate anniversaries and birthdays at people's homes. Some of our older customers say, "Our, our children may have forgotten our birthday, but Tanishq does not forget." And it's a huge number, huge number that we actually do it. It's, it's part of a building block exercise in our entire activity.
I want to share with you, an illustration of how we went about Akshaya Tritiya this year, and we do this pretty much for most of our festivals. First of all, the preparation starts a month, month and a half before, when we do cascades with our business partners and associates with the entire field team. We talk about how much to plan for, how to plan, how will we reach out to so many customers? The customer reach out starts 3-4 weeks before the Akshaya Tritiya offer period starts. We reached out this year, for example, to 140,000 individual customer homes, by each of our store staff across the network with surprise gifts. In the west, I was told that they gave a nice hamper of Alphonso, well-chosen Alphonso mangoes as a hamper, which just delighted the customer.
I mean, it's such a small thing, but it touches their heart. Many, many interesting... Every different store does it with some guidance, and this is something which really sometimes customers come back. I believe in a recent event we held in Indore, we had about 1,000 customers who attended a massive event, and two of them actually came with gifts for us, saying, "Har, har waqt aap hi gift dete ho, aaj hum bhi aapke liye laye hai." Some of our customers have taken our store staff for movies. Some of them come to just have a cup of coffee. The day of Akshaya Tritiya, this time the muhurat was from six. It was actually from 5 A.M., but we started our stores at 6:30. We had informed everybody. There was lamp lighting. There was a puja that was created.
In fact, lamp lighting, the Kuthu Vilakku, which is here, for some of you may not know, in many of our south stores, there is a lamp lighting every evening, and customers come and light the lamp. When we inaugurate a store, we first get the customers to light the lamp, then the store staff light the lamp, then the regional office and corporate office, and the chief guest lights the lamp because we believe we are all there to serve the end customer. The kind of planning that goes in terms of how to manage these customers on that day, the hospitality, the chaats that get served, it's a festival. There are children running around. It's crazy, it's chaotic. It's worth visiting some of these markets during Akshaya Tritiya or Dhanteras, but this is something which, you know...
That night went on till 2:00 A.M. for many people in the store. The team, fully energized and excited. We are a lot about actually design, craftsmanship, and engineering. A lot of the engineering we may not get to see, but it's lots of stuff flowing in, learning from watches, learning from TEAL, learning from the entire engineering company we are. But here, I'll just showcase a little bit of two collections. One was the previous Diwali collection, 2022 Diwali, which was Alekhya, which was about enameling. It was inspired by Pichwai and miniature paintings. Lot of enamel work, craftsmanship from Gujarat, Jaipur. We also had work done in Kolkata. So actually, three, four different workmanship and craftsmanship came together in the same collection and sometimes in the same product to create something unique.
Similarly, we had launched a Chola collection, in that same year, and for Tamil Nadu, in collaboration with a partner, where we revived Chola symbolism. We did many such collections. We did a temple-inspired collection for Odisha, et cetera, but this is just to share with you how different categories from different parts of the country, along with engineering and craftsmanship, coming together to build a superlative design. This is something which we launched during this Diwali, that is 2023, the Dharohar collection. Both these collections, by the way, fabulously received. We were not sure whether people want to go back to heritage.
It was inspired by ornaments and intricate crafted jewels and other, you know, products or, let's say, items of the past, but the way it got interpreted into the into the jewelry and the kind of karigari, if I'll read out this, we went to south for Nakashi work, north for Kundan inlay, carved stones and Chitai, west for Badhroom and Chandras, and east for delicate filigree and stamp work. All of this coming together to create a truly magical, impactful collection. So design, craftsmanship, product development, and engineering all coming together. But quickly coming to the business end of things. Those are some of the softer things that we are good at beyond the engines of growth that you all are all familiar with.
Lots of forces. Venkat covered very well all the pieces that are really working well for India. There is the premiumization. Suparna also covered about women and self-expression, as well as the premiumization piece. There is volatility in gold. There is a fluctuating consumer sentiment. There has been volatility in pricing even on diamonds. All of that results in demand volatility for sure. The moment gold prices go up suddenly or they suddenly come down or it—you know, there's fence sitting that happens, but once the new normal gets established, then customers come back in. The same thing we noticed in the case of solitaires, last year, and we've had to take some corrective actions. We are working towards it. Again, it's been a very uncertain period of time. Also, it results in margin pressure.
I'll cover a little bit more about the margin pressure, but certainly, when gold prices go up, it has a multiple impact on margin and, you know, we will cover a little bit further. Competitive intensity has been increasing and quite aggressive. I've tried to bucket them. There are segmented play. There is mainstream players, national chains, mainstream players, regional chains, key independents. There are about 50-60 different players whom we are tracking all the time across many markets, you know, across 50, 60, 70 towns. And there is also emerging fine jewelry players, who are there, including some emerging LGD players, which have come in recently. Many new players expected. We've heard a little bit about some of them. And the existing players are getting well-funded, so they are all expanding significantly. They have access to capital.
Many of the independents are becoming organized. Some of them are expanding into two or three stores in the same city or adjoining cities and doing a good job. They actually own that customer, which is a really high-value customer, INR 10 lakh+, INR 5 lakh+. A lot of flexibility, a lot of deep connect that they have within those customers, and everybody is sharply defending their turf, whether it's on gold prices, whether it's on making charges, whether it's on pricing overall. Many players also focusing a lot on studded, which is good because when many players make noise about studded, that category will grow, and therefore we should naturally, naturally also gain besides whatever work we do. Amidst all this, our portfolio is there.
I think we are well-covered in all aspects of the portfolio, and therefore, you know, we are still confident, and we will continue to grow share. Despite this competitive intensity, to have grown share from 4.5% to 8%, actually 8.5, 8.6%, including CaratLane, if I were to include that, over the last five years, gives us the confidence that we should be able to progress forward. Because the India opportunity is big, I think my figure there might be incorrect. I think it's $2,500 I read recently. You guys will know better. We are 8%, but 8.6, if I include CaratLane, of a INR 500,000 crore-INR 525,000 crore market. Premiumization and aspiration, not just in the top towns, but in many, many towns of India, growing.
There are 500 middle India towns. There used to be about 400 middle India towns about a decade ago when AC Nielsen came out with their findings, 1 lakh to 10 lakh population towns. Today, there are 500. We are present in 180 of those. We are present in about 31 sub-1 lakh population towns, many of them feeder markets. And of course, there is a young and modern segment which is waiting to self-express, and there's regional markets where our market shares are still much lower than the average. Very happy to report that in a market like Chennai, where we would have been less than 2%, Venkat, some years back, today it is 8% plus, and, you know, it's come to the national average.
And very interestingly, in a market like that, while we started with gold, we have pumped up the studded play in the recent past. So once you acquire the customer, you can migrate them upwards, and therefore, it's important that we keep the longer-term horizon in play and not get carried away by one month, one quarter, or one year, and that's what we are focused on. So therefore, the implications for us is continue to prioritize top-line growth. There is huge headroom in the market. We have a strong portfolio play, drive studded in a big way using this portfolio play and including acquiring customers at the top of the funnel.
With the competitive intensity that we are seeing, we must, you know, widen the moat, we must differentiate, we must build new capabilities, and that will require investment, because that's what will keep us ahead of the curve. As opposed to, you know, getting saddled and stuck by what competition is doing, we should keep moving, moving the bar ahead. So our ambition, and I'm saying this as an ambition, not necessarily a guidance, but you can take it for whatever it's worth. This is what we are chasing. If we have to get to the last time's commitment of 2.5x on FY 2022 to FY 2027, given the growth that we have seen in the first couple of years, our asking rate is only 15% CAGR, and therefore, that's the floor in our mind. Our ambition is 20%.
You know, our aspiration is 20%. Therefore, we've said a 15%-20% CAGR is somewhere. If we are... You know, if everything works well for us, if we are lucky, if all the forces play out the way it is, why not 20%? And certainly, we are very, very confident that we will not go below the 15%, and that's the logic for this 15%-20%. We serve across the portfolio. We serve around 3.8 million customers last year. We are hoping to—in a given year, the customer base is much larger. This is the number of people who buy from us every year.
We hope to be serving 6 million buyers by FY 2027. We are hoping that the market share, combined market share of our portfolio from 8.6% should land in the early double digits, and therefore, we think that perhaps the market maybe, you know, it could be anything between around the INR 700,000 crore mark or something, ± that. It. I would say 700-750. You know, there are various estimates, we really don't know. And in terms of sheer presence, we should be in 300-330 towns, because this is a moving target. Now, this is a figure that we can say for two years at a time, but over years, even every two years, there, the middle India towns, which get ready for what we believe is for Tanishq, you know, keeps moving.
So it's 300+. Could be 300, it could be 320. We are saying right now, confident of 100 more Tanishq stores in the next few years. It may be more, depending on how it goes. Certainly, 150+ in Mia and, you know, more in CaratLane. I'll cover that very shortly. So this is our ambition, and, you know, with the blessings from all the good forces in the world, hopefully, we should get there. A quick look at what each brand is looking at in terms of different things, not necessarily what we already do well. We've been doing a lot of work on modern customers, both in gold as well as studded. We think modern gold is a good opportunity, lightweight, sub-INR 100,000. A lot of work going on there.
The opportunity can only increase. Self-expression, youth, modern segments, lightweights. We believe we should work a lot more on being a diamond destination for the high-value studded, whether it is for classic, fashion, collectibles, wearables, flamboyance. ROR stands for rarest of the rare. We have introduced a property called Ethereal Wonders. It's branded Ethereal Wonders, where we bring rare gemstones and rare diamonds, put it in the form of an exhibition over 3-4 days, and we've seen terrific response. Some of the ticket values there are sitting in INR crores. They're really rare, and it's in partnership with some of our partners who are stone suppliers, et cetera. So very interesting.
The picture here, in a way, gives you a sense of one of them, but there are many others. If some of you would like to be party to that and are interested, please let us know. We'll be very happy to call you there. We've done a lot of work on solitaires. We have grown very well on solitaires over the last 3-4 years. The last 6 months have been a little sticky because of the international prices of solitaires having corrected downwards, partly due to international economic stress, partly due to China not seeing anything great and so many other things happening there, but and partly due to the supply of roughs and polished stones being well in excess of the demand.
You know, the bullwhip effect, they didn't catch up with understanding, you know, how much should we be supplying, and after that, there has been some corrective, so the price has stabilized. It may remain as to where it is. It may remain a little soft. It may pick up only when international markets revive, you know, and especially China is a big one. US is the other one, Europe, and many other places. But we have worked on two lines. We have a Celeste line, which is focused on nano-faceting, and it's called the first light. It's in partnership. It's the first ever. Visibly, you can see the brilliance of the product. We've had some struggle on the supply chain. Hopefully, this year onwards, it should crack, and that should really take us up there.
We also have some special cuts for the classic line, and therefore, a lot of excitement in this, despite what some of you might be hearing in the market. Wedding and regional markets continue to be big. We focus on about 16-18 communities, but we've taken few communities at a point in time, focus on them. What we've also done now is increase the number of events and functions that women celebrate. It has truly become a big, fat Indian wedding. We've seen it, like how there is a Bollywood effect, which is kind of creating this big, fat Indian wedding across. In Chennai proper, you see enough Sangeet ceremonies. So how can we get our stores and store staff to target different customer segments for different events, different kinds of products, from engagement to wedding, many events to first anniversary?
That's a whole journey that work is on. That's Nayanthara, by the way, who's a rock star for the South. A very quick look at Mia. Mia is for the star in you, and some of you might have caught the Rakul Preet ad, which was there. I'm not going to spend time here, but she's been our brand ambassador, and this was the collection which was launched in Diwali. Growing in retail, visibility, and footprint, this is our flagship store in CP, 1,600 sq ft. We have a few 1,500+ square foot stores, but many of them now 1,000 square feet, and earlier, there were some 500-700 square feet, so we are upgrading that as well.
About 180 EBOs in 77 towns now and growing fast, including places like Bilaspur, Vijayawada, Brahmapur, and many other places. The middle India story continues there as well. It is a young, restless, and fashion-forward brand, sharply focused on Gen Z, Gen Y. The product language is very sharp, very specific. It's all about fashion, style, self-expression, minimal, a lot of 14-karat, 80% is studded, and we have a presence in about overall 450-odd POS, including 280-odd Tanishq stores and 180 EBOs. You know, read that last POS as EBOs. Our ambition is to serve 1 million customers by FY 2027, and that's about 2.2x-2.5x. It's an aspirational number.
It doesn't add up so easily, but yes, 1 million customers is what we want to serve. We should be present in about 300-350 EBOs or standalone Mia stores, and the balance Tanishq stores. So 750 POS across 150 towns, and certainly, we are expecting to double the turnover in the next three years, compared to, you know, FY 2023. So, sorry, FY 2024, last year's turnover. A very quick look at Zoya, our own, India's truly own luxe brand. The pillars have been around exquisite craftsmanship, patented cuts, rare stones, bespoke products. We have entire bespoke service, where individual customers are involved in a bespoke creation.
Some of it can take eight months, some of them a year, and they are involved in the creation of the product at every stage, including a visit to the factory and the craftsmanship interaction as well. Personalized experiences, I'll touch upon that. Luxury is expected to explode in India. I mean, everybody's talking about it. There are many numbers of how UHNIs and HNIs are there, and so many brands are excited. The luxury brands are here in a big way. Our ambition is to grow revenue to 0.5x in three years. By the way, it has grown from about INR 60-odd crore to close to INR 300 crore in the last four and a half years or so, five years or so. I think, you know, it, it can...
We are not that worried about the crores it does, as much as the excellence and the pinnacle of craftsmanship that this brand stands for and the exclusivity it creates. Not too many luxury brands in India do more than INR 100 crore. Even some of the older luxury brands which were there, and which are no longer there in jewelry, used to do less than INR 100 crore in India. A lot of it was also being exported. We have moved from 3 to 8 boutiques. In fact, as we speak, there are 11 boutiques. We have opened 3, some spilled over from the previous year. We are hoping to get to 15 by this year and maybe 20. We are also present in about 8 galleries in some select Tanishq stores.
There is international presence as a gallery in at least three out of the four stores, if not more. In the US, we are seeing a lot of excitement and traction around this, so who knows? One of these days, you might find a Zoya store in some market in the US. This is Linking Road. Many of you might not have even seen it, but it really stands out. It's a beautiful store. It's a private room inside most of our Zoya stores. The one in Taj Mahal Palace, maybe some of you all have been there. It is doing very well. We have now opened one in Brady House, very close to behind Bombay House, the Starbucks and Sabyasachi Lane that is there. That's one of the new ones which have just opened. There's one come up in Aundh.
This is the one in Jubilee Hills. It stands out. And somebody asked me: "Do you guys actually make money on this store?" And we said, "Yeah, we do." We have a clear we are on the path to make money. It's a beautiful store on Jubilee Hills. So I think the address, the impact, and the storytelling inside the store is, is very critical, besides the product itself being of a superlative category. What many people don't know is the personalized, curated experiences that we are able to do. Last year, 340, from concerts to culinary experiences to sporting. We have a concierge service, which we, we take great pride in for international events. I think that whole world of luxury is about really customizing the experience as much as the product and, and, you know, the in-store experience as well.
This is something that we have now built a terrific competitive advantage on. A quick look on the CaratLane. I'm covering it because we need to cover a lot of ground in these 45 minutes, and I'm going to take 10 minutes, little bit more. We are in the business of enabling people to express their emotion, and CaratLane has really grown from strength to strength. The brand is really bustling with energy. Terrific growth, a blistering top-line growth, you know, 60% in 3 years CAGR and a 47% in the last 5 years. This is the NSV figures. Consumer price terms, it'll be around INR 3,400 crores. It is clearly a born-digital, omni, full service brand. We're talking about online orders. We are talking about try at home, store visits, feeding leads.
100% of the customer effort is digital. 90% of it might reflect in the store in terms of sale, but it's a completely joint closure omni. CaratLane Live is something which is terrific, you know, where you can engage in live video calls. The entire impulse of the organization and the entire huge backend team there is to get a human interaction going, and we've learned from that even in Tanishq. That's exactly what we've done, and this is really... This is the app and how it looks. It's a constant improvement. I think you have some several million app users, and several lakh, almost a million. Even in Tanishq, by the way, there's about six lakh monthly active users on the app, so a lot of learning from each other and a lot of action on this, on this side.
Retail has been terrific. We have 272 stores in more than 100 cities, and there's an opportunity to add another 100 cities and 150 stores within the next 3 years. That doesn't end it there. I'm sure middle India will keep growing. The opportunity is huge. We don't just look at same-store growth, but we look at catchment growth, as the CaratLane team has educated me from time to time. Sometimes the same-store growth may be in single digits, but the catchment ZIP code-level kind of definition of catchment growth, last year, for example, was 22% and a total growth of 34%. So CaratLane is doing things differently, and we are very proud of the way they're doing it. But it has also become a formidable retail force.
It is visible, it's present, it's like how, you know, across these many, many... And with every new set of stores, I think there's an evolving thing. This is a signature store at Indira Nagar, which the team is very, very proud of. We are all very proud of it. Amazing, it's beautiful every day, the kind of VM that's inside the stores. I think if you all have not had a chance to visit some of the newer CaratLane stores, you will see some terrific work there. There's also learning. While CaratLane has learned a lot from the physical retail from Titan, but Titan is also got something to learn from CaratLane.
So we're very proud of the kind of work, and the customer is at the center of it, solving her needs and ensuring that she is constantly delighted, is a very important piece, and I think that's the science that the team has brought in. These are some of the iconic collections. You'll find in every CaratLane store, about four or five iconic collections in windows. These are some of them. These are classics. These are beautiful. These are identity products. Some great work on this as well. Customer NPS has been climbing, and there's something called a repeat rate, which the team measures in terms of the total number of customers we have as a customer base.
On a 1.5 million, the repeat rate is 17, so getting more and more people to come more often through the app and otherwise is a perennial drive. These NPS scores are now comparable to Tanishq, 85%-88%, so we are truly best in class in this piece. There is opportunities not just in towns, but in products, and we are talking about strengthening the 50,000+ space. There's a lot of work that's gone in the sub-20,000, the 20,000-50,000, and certain categories like mangalsutras and earrings and finger rings, but I think there's opportunity sitting even in the 50,000-100,000 space and even beyond. A very quick look at an interesting revolutionary tech that enables video messages in the jewelry.
Happy anniversary, Doodlebug! Five years, can you believe it? But, Doodle, I'm sorry. After all, I love you, Doodlebug. With a heartfelt video embedded in your CaratLane ring forever with CaratLane postcards.
There are a lot more applications for this. This was just an introduction. I think this is going to be a great tech innovation, which a lot of work is going on in the background. We'll come back to you with more updates in the future, but the ambition is to certainly double the customer base. Clearly, there's an opportunity to hit 400+, 425+ stores and 200+ towns within the next three years, and an exciting journey on international, which Dinny will probably cover a little bit. But the first one coming up soon and then thereafter, mostly in North America and thereafter many other markets, I'm sure. I think somebody was saying, "Everybody's thinking about lab-grown. I hope you're going to cover something on lab-grown." I'm going to share with you what we have learned, okay?
We recognize this as an important development in the industry. We recognize that we have to be mindful of it. There's something going on in one of the biggest markets in the world, in the U.S. So what's the learning from the U.S. market? The U.S. market actually is now seeing a good 50% of their bridal segment, which is the center stone, big rock engagement ring, which is a very big piece, has got, in volume terms, shifted from natural to lab-grown. But that is where the impact has happened, and that is a very large part of the U.S., emotion and the U.S., rituals of buying jewelry, and that is bought whenever they get married. They may get married multiple times, but nevertheless, that's when they... But the rest of the time, they don't really buy that.
They buy a lot of other adornment stuff, and there, I think lab-grown has yet to kind of catch up. Some impact is there. When this journey started in the US, a lot of supply was not there. Now, the supply has gone crazy. I think every diamantaire or most diamantaires in India have invested. China has done something, CVD technology is on, HPHT is on. CVD can do smaller diamonds also, up to one carat. HPHT can do bigger diamonds also. Earlier, it was kind of segregated. Supply scenario has gone bonkers. Consequently, this is how the wholesale price has come down. It's. In fact, it's come down to below $100 per carat, so this graph is not fully accurate. $100 a carat is the wholesale price of the lab-grown today. That has created huge impact on, jewelers in the US.
The Signet Group, as well as several other players, have seen average order value shrinking. So what they jumped into, and then suddenly realized, oops, their, their revenue has taken a hit. So while—and, and volumes—penetration has not necessarily gone up. It's already penetrated. And therefore, there is a lot of price instability, a lot of people have lost money. Jewelers have lost money, intermediaries have lost big time. Now the entire business is on memo or consignment. Wholesale prices have collapsed, but retail prices have not come. They've also come down from maybe $3,000-$4,000 to $1,500 a carat. But imagine still between 100 to 1,500, every new player who comes will come in and discount. We have heard Walmart might come at $400 a carat. Anything is possible.
That whole market will get commoditized as and when whatever happens. In India, the players have emerged after they realized U.S. let us do something here, and many of these people have started supplying. And here, therefore, the pricing is a little more reasonable. It is not in that $1,500, it's, it's maybe about $1,000 a carat. So there is money, but every new player that comes is going to keep bringing it down. So there are two impacts on this. One is, how do you make money in this category? Will it necessarily increase the penetration of diamonds in the country? India and U.S. is not going to behave in the same way. There is a stored value concept in India, not there in the U.S., to, to a large extent, not there, and to a large extent here.
Secondly, in India, adornment is the big play, not the center stone engagement ring. For those who buy solitaires, they want value, also something that will remain with the next generation. In the smaller diamonds, the cost economics, unit cost, still not working out as effectively, but tech product, it can keep coming on. By the way, this is not the bottom. We have heard China might even automate the cutting and polishing of these small diamonds, in which case that $100 can become $50. Last year, we heard of rakhis with lab-grown diamonds. See, the moment and many fashion brands are looking at this, whether it is LVMH, whether it is Pandora, whether it is Swarovski, and many others. I'm sure you'll find it on Prada bags, you'll find it. So how is this category going to evolve?
Will it remain in the space of precious jewelry, or will there be two segments? Million-dollar questions, all of you are more intelligent than we are, and therefore, we are observing where this is going. What we've learned from the US, let's not just jump into it for the heck of it. There is no immediate benefit of early mover advantage, okay? So look at what's happening, understand where it's going. Be clear that segments which will remain, a Tiffany, Bulgari, Cartier, are not going to touch. Many other mainstream jewelers have touched, and they have fallen into deep trouble. So what is the game to be played, if at all it has to be played, and where will this category go, is something which is unclear. We are observing, we are in touch with industry, we are trying to learn.
You know, our entire activity is to learn. There is a lot of activity hotting up in India. There are 30, 40 players. They're putting up stores, many of them struggling, some of them managing. But will the margin remain? Will it get squeezed? And then how the unit economics work. So it's a whole world out there. I, I can't be more knowledgeable than this, but this is what we are observing and learning, and therefore, we are also saying observe, understand, learn, think, figure out. If and when we should do something, we will decide. We'll come back to you when we have... To recap, this is the aspiration, and, you know, while the revenue growth is there, there's a question on everybody's mind. Time's up, they're telling me, last slide.
So, thank you for giving me those ten minutes extra to cover some more ground. Gold price escalation has three big impacts. Firstly, when prices go up, I'm not talking about demand, I'm talking only about margin now. There is gold rate wars which will happen. MC, as a percentage of... You know, the customer says: "Why are you charging me so much for the same design?" You know, gold rate has increased, but then what? So there's pressure, there's a voice from the customer as well. The mix itself can change. Customers may decide to downgrade on the kind of products they pick up in gold. In studded, there's a weighted average impact of the contribution of diamonds and gold in the total product composition. There's diamond, there is making, and there is gold.
Now, the margins are better in the first two, and in gold, the margins are lower. So the moment the gold rate goes up, the net effect of that is a dilution in the percentage of the studded GC. And that, when it goes up with this level, it becomes very difficult to claw back. We have to do a lot of actions, in fact, a lot of work. Internally, we call it a GC Max project, and we've done it in the past, three years ago. We have kicked that in already, but it does take time to climb back. And the kind of gold price increase we have seen, and we are continuing to see in the geopolitical uncertainties, in the central banks buying gold, we are unsure if the gold price is likely to correct dramatically downwards.
It's likely to remain range-bound and could also go up. So therefore, this is an ongoing activity for us, be it product mix, be it material innovation, therefore, enables product and design reengineering, sourcing efficiencies in terms of stone buying, pricing, opportunities to look at where we can look at dispersion, and clearly tightening up operating efficiencies while investing for growth. So it is a complex piece to ensure that we claw back-
But I think we owe it to ourselves and to all the stakeholders that we can get EBIT margins to—and this is not a quarter EBIT margin, I want to clarify. It is a annualized one, and therefore, we are seeing this. Currently, there is volatility, and therefore, you know, volatility may be a strong word, as Ashok corrects me, it may be fluctuation. There will be fluctuation in the EBIT margin, but on an annualized basis, this is where we think we want to anchor all of our expectations. We need to continue to grow. The headroom for growth is there. We need to improve capability and differentiate, and therefore, we will have to invest to ensure that that opportunity to get to that double-digit market share is not lost. A last piece, I'm leaving it for you.
I have been associated with Tanishq for more than 13, 14 years now.
I don't have to think too much. I just have to enter the store, and I'll find what I'm looking for.
I just can't think of any other brand after Tanishq, to be very honest. For me, it is Tanishq, Tanishq, and Tanishq.
Thank you, Ajoy, and good afternoon, everybody. This is the International Business Division's first outing at the Investor and Analyst Meet, but it certainly won't be the last, because like Venkat said, we aim to get to that 5% share of Titan's revenue, and that is hopefully happening quickly. So let me jump straight into the presentation. So like Suparna said, you know, this is where it all started. So for international business, this is where it all started in its 2.0 version. We opened the first Tanishq store in Meena Bazaar in Dubai on Dussehra day, October 2020, right in the middle of COVID, and there's been no looking back since then.
We are now up to 16 Tanishq and Mia stores around the world, 8 of them in the UAE, 4 in the US, 2 in Qatar, 1 in Singapore, and 1 opening in Oman on Monday. The first international Mia store is already open in Bur Juman Mall in Dubai. Dubai is a good place for us to try out all our experiments and perfect the template, perfect the model before we scale it up. Like Ajoy said, CaratLane will follow. Zoya, we have presence in the form of galleries, but we really want to get to a full Zoya store soon and really create that experience that Zoya provides. Zoya provides a very, very different experience, and we want to do that.
In 2020, during COVID, our watch partner in UAE wanted to shut down 22 of the watch EBOs that we had. We took them over at that point in time. Now, we are up to 45 EBOs in watches around the world, and that number, we are looking to grow it even more. The other interesting thing is in terms of the diversity. Venkat spoke about diversity from a gender standpoint, but one of the things that in IBD we look at is diversity from a nationality standpoint. Today, we have 16 nationalities of staff serving over 60 nationalities in terms of customers, so the diversity that we have is really, really very wide. In terms of turnover growth, we've been pretty much doubling every year from INR 250 crore to INR 500 crore to INR 1,000 crore last year.
So that rate of growth, we hope, will continue, and we are adding a lot more stores. So by the end of this year, the 45 watch EBOs would have grown to 75. The Tanishq and Mia stores would have grown to... I mean, Tanishq would be 25, another 5, Mia, and we've also opened the first Titan Eye+ in Dubai. We'll show you some pictures of that, and we hope to increase that to about 10 stores as we go along. Now, one of the things I realized as I got into running this division is that actually, all of us in IBD are sitting on the shoulders of a giant. Some of the stuff that you heard from the previous presentations, you probably would not have really picked up the value of that....
It's tremendous, because wherever we've gone, wherever we've tried to do something new, the reception that we've got from the diaspora customers that Venkat spoke about, the reception that we've got from other international customers, has been phenomenal. A lot of that is what has been built here in India. All we have to do is transpose it a little bit, modify it a little bit. But fundamentally, what's worked here, because it's, it's core, it's about good customer relationships, it's about doing the right things. A lot of that works anywhere in the world. So let me show you this, and there are a couple of layers to this story. So the gentleman that you see in the center, the Sardar, is Sahej. He is the son of Harmeetji, who is one of our partners for the last 20-25 years.
Runs one store in Karol Bagh and two in Dwarka. And, when we started international operations, Harmeet was one of the first people to put up his hand saying, "I want one of your Dubai stores. I'm gonna move my son there, and he will run it." And Sahej has been doing extremely successfully well with the store. This is in Karama, which is, by the way, a South Indian locality. So you can imagine a Sardar running a store selling to Mallus and Tamilians, but it's working very well. So that is, again, one of the qualities or the characteristics of what we've built in Titan. The partners have been participating in this international opportunity and super excited. The second part of the story, that's Mr. and Mrs. Gautam. And this is on AT Day. So like Ajay showed you...
Ajoy showed you the illustration of what happens in the well-oiled machinery of India, Tanishq, on Akshaya Day. This was at 8:30 A.M. at the Karama store on Akshaya Day, May tenth, where Mr. and Mrs. Gautam had made a visit to the Nanded Gurdwara about a month back in Maharashtra, which is their home state. And when they went there, they thought about Sahej, and they picked up a Rumala Sahib, which is the shawl, and they brought it back, and they came into the store on that morning at 8:30 A.M., before the store got busy, and they said, "We just want to thank you for all the love that you have given us." So I think this is really the- you know, what, what Titan Company and its brands have been able to do to the customers.
You saw that a little bit in the last few stories that customers spoke about in Ajoy's presentation. So what we've exported, I mean, is a lot of jewelry, and we're very proud of the jewelry that we've moved from India into international markets. But what we are even more proud about is what we've been able to take into international markets, which is the core of Titan, which is the customer experience, the elevating experiences that we have created. So, Ambuj, we've also reached 89, which is your NPS score. You won't find a number here that's below 80, nor will you find a number on the right-hand side, which is the Google ratings, which is below 5.8. Sorry, 4.8. So which is again something that we think, when we went into Dubai, many of the jewelry stores did not have seating.
The Dubai jewelry was actually more of a, it's a hustle business, right? You come in, grab a customer. Service is the last thing that people think of in their minds. So Tanishq going in there has sort of recreated the market in terms of setting the standards very differently, allowing customers to be treated very differently. So a lot of things changed in those markets with the entry of Tanishq coming in. Top left is a store in a mall in Dubai, one of our early bets, and this was one of the stores amongst all of those stores that was not doing well. But as we persevered with it, yesterday, Ajoy and Venkat, this store was the number one store in Dubai, yesterday's sales. So Dubai Silicon Oasis is, you know, really caught up and come back.
Right-hand side is the Tanishq in Singapore, Serangoon Road, the corner of Mustafa. So if you ever go to Singapore anytime soon, go take a look at it. You can't miss this store. Terrific visibility, and pulling in a large number of Indian customers as well as tourist customers coming into Singapore. This one is the Mia, opened in the Bur Juman Mall, and getting in a lot of non-Indian customers also because it's located in a mall, and that's really where the ability to go beyond the diaspora, we feel will really happen. Now, if you look at... If you look carefully at the interior of this store, you'll see that it's a little different from the Tanishqs in India. This is the Dallas store. It's a 5,000 sq ft store in Dallas.
When we looked at the U.S., we thought we'd take the opportunity to contemporize the Tanishq look. This is a more modern and a more, say, a contemporary take on the way Tanishq is in India, and this has worked extremely well with our customers around the world, and this is something that we were actually looking at bringing back into India as well. This is Tanishq, Chicago. Again, a very large store, again, doing extremely well. This is the Tanishq in Houston, and the partner here is Azmath, who is our partner in Allahabad and Moradabad.... Again, interesting story here. Azmath's wife is now running the store there, Aisha, and doing a terrific job of, you know, keeping both sides of the world going.
So their Allahabad and Moradabad stores, as well as the Houston store, are being managed by this husband and wife team, and really brilliant team at managing customers and customer relationships. So that's one of the strengths that we have. This was Diwali day outside Dallas, so both, during Dhanteras, just about when the store opened and on Diwali day, you had these kind of long queues flowing outside of the store. This picture went viral around the US, and a lot of Americans were kind of stopping by as they were trying, saying, "What's going on here? Has Apple launched a new brand called Tanishq?" So it did create a lot of interest. And on the right-hand side, you can see the kind of interest the brand generates.
On festival days, the stores are packed, and it really takes a lot of work to keep all the customers happy and serve them on time. Now, this is another characteristic that we are really good at, which is listening to our customers, and that's part of the strength, part of why we are so successful, not just in India, but around the world. So on the left-hand side, you have Beate, who's our Chief Designer for IBD, part of Revathi's team, talking to customers. So it's not just the IBD team.
When Venkat, in his presentation, said, "Imagine all the possibilities," some of that is coming from conversations like the one he's having here with a couple of American customers to understand what their needs from jewelry are, and this is what will help us go beyond the 35 million-odd diaspora Indians, who give us a good starting point. But once we understand what the requirements of customers like the two women in the picture are, we can make pretty much any product. I mean, unlike making an iPhone, which requires a certain technology capability, jewelry-making does require technology capability and craftsmanship, but we have that capability. So there is no jewelry anywhere in the world that we cannot make, no watch anywhere in the world that we will-- we cannot make.
When we come to eye care, we have some really good products and a great competitive advantage there. All of these on customer understanding, is translating into a set of products, like this one, which was launched for the Middle East. It's based on the eight-pointed star, which is a sort of quintessential element in Islamic and Arabic architecture, and this did very well in the Middle East, not just with Arabic customers, but also with Indian and other international customers who wanted something to remember the Middle East by. This is a Ta'wiz, which is an amulet. It's popular both amongst the Muslim community as well as amongst us in India, the Hindus. We use this for protection, and here, the combination of the Ta'wiz concept with filigree work from India was again, very well-received.
This is an example of a requirement that came up from the U.S., saying that a lot of women there need to balance their personal and professional lives. They want products that can be both worn to the office as well as worn for a party in the evening, and this was created from to meet that requirement of the need for premium wear in the U.S. It has also got certain patents. It's a signature setting, where you have the prong setting on one side, and you have a channel setting on the other side. This, we applied for design registration in the U.S., and this is the first design patent that is being given to Tanishq in the U.S.
A few of the visuals in terms of the type of impact that we are trying to create in the Middle East and in markets, like, I mean, in the Middle East, in Qatar and UAE. This brings us to the Titan Eye+ story. One of the things that Soumen spoke about is the market share that we enjoy in the top two rows that he showed you, which is the premium segment of customers, right? This is translated beautifully when we opened this store in the Middle East, because in those markets, to get high-quality eye care, you've got to pay a really high price. There aren't too many options, or there are hardly any options where you're getting a good quality product at a reasonable price, and that's really the value the Titan Eye+ has been able to create.
3,000+ customers, a 90 NPS score. Twenty percent of our customers are non-Indians, and in terms of overall performance across all the stores, both in India and international, this store comes in the top 15. These are four of the... three of the other stores that we have launched. So we have a total of 4 Titan Eye+ stores. We plan to expand this to about 10, develop the template in the Middle East, working in UAE as well as looking at Saudi, and then we hope to be able to take this to other international markets, too. Now, this is where it really started. Titan has been present internationally with watches since 1992, and all of what Suparna spoke about, the mainline analog aspect, the premium focus, the focus on women, all of these are helping us build the brand internationally.
We were present for a long time with watches, but selling to Indians predominantly. Now, that has changed because we can't really depend on the Indian diaspora to sell watches to, whereas we can depend on them when we sell jewelry. So for watches, we have to move beyond the Indians to international customers, and all of the work that India is doing is really helping us. The interesting thing that we are understanding or learning from this is that brands like the three big brands, Casio, Citizen, and Seiko, they're all struggling with growth today, whereas in India, we are enjoying the 20% growth that Suparna spoke about.
That scale and size that we have in India, 20 million-odd products that we sell, allows us to create a certain capability, a set of products which we can take into international markets, and that's really what we are excited about. So we are focusing on more and more EBOs to build the brand presence to showcase the products, like this one that you're seeing in Kuwait. These two are in Vietnam. We've also looking at rebuilding the relationships with partners. We've had partners in these countries for many years, but some of them are, you know, they needed to change as we've got more of the products, and we needed to get a better presence in modern retail. We needed to get a better presence in the electronic channels for the smart products.
We needed new partners, and we are changing some of the partners, bringing in new partners as we go along. This was a brand launch and a dealer meet in Vietnam, where we worked with our partner to showcase the products to a whole bunch of new dealers. We also are working on building the brand by tying up with several properties, including the TCS Marathon. Where are we heading to? Where are we going to? We wanna get to around 50 Tanishq stores around the world, complemented by Tanishq websites. Tanishq.ae, Tanishq.com, which is the U.S. website, and Tanishq.Singapore are already up and running. We will add more websites as we go along. We need to gain share in the GCC. We are a late entrant there. Many other jewelers were already present, and we have to catch up.
In North America, we're pretty early into the market, and we want to dominate that market, and we will keep extending beyond many more. The diaspora market gives us a beachhead. It allows us to get going, get started, build a profitable business quickly, and once that scale and that profitability is achieved, it gives us the legitimacy to extend beyond the Indian diaspora, go to other nationalities, whether it is Emiratis in the UAE or whether it is Americans in North America. Taking both Titan Watches and Titan Eye+ across to more international customers. Hopefully, at some point in time, we will get to Taneira as well and the fragrances business.
Like Venkat said, from 2% to 5%, so that's really what we are looking to do, $500 million or $0.5 billion and 500,000 customers around the world. And just to give confidence that it that is happening, on Dhanteras... Sorry, on AT, we were 2% of Titan's revenue last year, but on AT Day, we were 3% of AT Day revenue. So in that sense, the direction is slowly progressing, and surely, we will hit that 5%. But the last slide is really this, that today we've been able to build 400 Titanians around the world. Some of these are our partner employees who are running the partner stores. And in terms of nationalities, if you look at it, like I said, we have a fairly diverse spread of nationalities.
Our gender diversity is also pretty high at 33%. And, one of the things that we are really very proud of is that our Dubai location, the company's Titan Global Retail, has now become GPTW certified there. I mean, that's something that Titan has done very well in India. We are known as a great organization to work for, and internationally, also, we've been able to carry that one more flavor of the parent organization. So let me leave you with this visual. The one in the center has eight different nationalities there. So there is a Pakistani, there is an Emirati, there is an Egyptian, there is a Nepali, there is an Algerian, there is a Filipino, and there is a Bhutanese national. And finally, of course, person on the right, this is in UAE, so that is a good Mallu Indian to complete the complement.
This is Isa, one of our Emirati employees, recently visited Bangalore, and this is what he has. So here, Mr. Isa Al Khwaja, our first Emirati associate from Titan Global, sitting in Bangalore, enjoying some Iranian food in good company of an Indian gentleman. Isa, how is your experience?
Wallah, I would say if I had to rate it out of 10, 10. Everything is good and-
The score he gives Titan is a 10 on 10. Thank you very much.
Okay, good afternoon. What a fantastic, you know, visuals, videos, stories, and, while some of the visuals and videos were showing our marketing and branding prowess, some of them were showing the deep relationships which we enjoy. But some of the videos, particularly, you know, in Venkat's presentation, that Uttarakhand women, transformation of Karigar Park, Weaver Shala, they actually fill up our hearts with warm, make our eyes moist, because at the end of it, all of us are human. And the superwoman story. So folks, actually, I want to tell you, because we are in capital markets and finance world, we really need not be so hard-nosed. You know, we can actually give a big hand to all the presenters who brought. Please, please, guys, on the back. All the presenters who brought these stories such beautifully and made what Titan is actually good at.
What I thought that for finance section, the good starting point would be that we reflect on what's happening in and around us in, in last 4-5 years. If you just think about 4 years back in May 2020, none of us would have even imagined that we can have this kind of gathering in such a beautiful hall and conversing with each other. So pandemic, 2 years, and what it did ultimately, you know, like, one is that if you look at, and I will show you some of the numbers, that our various categories have a very, very different trajectory coming out of pandemic or during pandemic. Their recovery paths were very different, and that you will see in the numbers. But what else pandemic did, that it brought actually very, very high inflation and interest rates.
The liquidity which got infused by various central banks, actually, when the pandemic was ending and we were hoping for a normalized world, I remember February 2022, around, we were preparing our budgets for FY 2023, and we thought at last we are going to have a very, very normal world, and then the whole inflation and steep increase in interest rates started happening all around the globe. You all remember that. I'm just trying to bring together, and that ultimately led to K-shaped recovery. Venkat talked about how Titan is more serving the upper half of the K letter, and that is how perhaps we are slightly insulated. Also, while economic turmoil or economic environment of a sticky inflation and now the delay in interest rate cuts was not sufficient, in the same February, simultaneously, almost, geopolitical tensions started.
Russia-Ukraine war, exactly February 2022 started. Now, recently, we know in October 2023, we have another tension going on. And what does it do all to us, you know, in last five years? That, if I show you some of the graphs, gold has almost more than doubled. And it appears, and Ajoy touched about that, that it's going to remain at the elevated level. There is a high degree of chance, this being now neutral currency being favored by all central banks, this is going to even further go up from here. But it actually solidifies gold as a very, very strong asset class, and to me, it appears when consumer gets used to a price level, they will again. And which we are seeing, you know?
Sometime in steep price rise, the bullion starts getting favor, and we also sell more coins, then proportion slightly goes up. But actually, gold is becoming more and more solid, and there is no expectation for it to come down in near future. Rather, it will keep getting stronger. And whatever Ajoy spoke about the impact of that, those impact are there. Even, diamond, you know, and that peak which you see in between, this was at the onset of Russian-Ukraine war, supply chain getting disrupted and prices peaking and people buying and building inventories, which is yet to get cleared completely, and then, you know, now the corrections also which Ajoy spoke about. I think, and I have heard that actually, Sensex and Nifty or any country share market index reflects the mood of economy.
If that is true, then Indian mood of economy has been pretty upbeat, you know? And that also in a way reflect, because I believe all of you are very wise people, and if you have taken Nifty to that level, you must have some reason behind that, some reasons behind that. And I think the whole India story, that the largest... One of the large economy growing fastest in the world... the whole rising affluence and aspirations, the young demography, the whole digital savviness. I'm sure some of those factors are kind of working to give this kind of result. The point also, which I wanted to talk about, that when the real interest rates were going up globally, actually gold should have come down.
And that is what I think a lot of people took out money from gold ETFs, because that was the dots which was working very well so far, that if the real interest rates are going up, then gold is not a very attractive asset and one should go towards, you know, some other financial securities. But in spite of that, in the last 12 months, when the real interest rates have been rising, gold also have been rising. And that what brings to the point that now connecting dots are becoming very, very difficult. Rules are... Set rules which were there to understand the world and economy are kind of getting questioned or getting upset, and which makes the world uncertain.
You know, how do you think about future, becomes more complicated, and that is where I think the core values, core foundation, which Titan has built over the last 40 years, helps us to navigate and will help us to navigate, future along the way. Now, let us look at Titan. You know, what we have been doing last five years. Given the environment, which was there, I think it's not a bad performance. It's a quite good performance. Overall, all the numbers which I am presenting, they are, consolidated basis. Consolidated basis, as you heard the stories, we have now CaratLane, we have international business, we have Teal also, which is the another engineering company which we have in Titan. They are large enough, they are growing fast enough, and they are outside the standalone Titan.
So it's important that you also start paying attention to our consolidated numbers, because a lot more is happening even outside Titan standalone numbers. So we grew 19% over the five years. But if you look at different businesses, the business recovery, business bounce back has been pretty different. Jewelry has been, I think, in a way, well supported, just during COVID and after COVID. A lot of savings, et cetera, kind of jewelry received share of wallet in that way. So I have a five-year, so five-year CAGR is given, but in last 2 years, clearly post-COVID, recovery of most of our categories have been pretty impressive in FY 2023 and FY 2024. That's the last column. Now, just think about what has happened over five years, you know?
While Venkat spoke about the volume of customers, and I will tell you that 88% jewelry, which because of the higher growth rate over 5, last five years, from 83 to 85, 88%, but it contributes about 10-11% of our customer. So if in a year, about 25 million of customers are served by Titan, or 26 million, then 10% contributes that 88% of the revenue and rest 90%. And they are almost same, you know, customer persona who can kind of keep buying, and that is where the importance of other businesses and customers financially, as well as number of customer-wise. The other shift which has happened, which Dinesh presented, it was 0.8%, now it is 2.2%.
Hopefully, will become 5%, and I have something to talk about that also. Within watch business variable, which was just a 3%, now have become 14%. And some of the decisions which affects portfolio in the last five years, I have tried to just bring a complete list, however big or small they were. Some of them proved to be very good for us. You can see we did HUG Innovations, which is now Titan Smart Lab in Hyderabad, and is in a way backbone for our smart wearable business. We opened international subsidiaries for supporting our international business. CaratLane is now almost 100% subsidiary for us, a very, very successful progressive acquisition. Clean Origin is a LGD US company where we have a minority stake, not doing so well.
CueZen, supporting our smart wearable business, again, a US AI tech-enabled, health, fitness-focused algorithm company. We exited from Faber-Castell, which was our 10 years back, we have, I think, got into that. And another JV, which we have with Montblanc, that also we have. So these are the five-year, some of the things, some of the things have worked very well, some of the things have not worked so well. The other important, you know, many, many presenters talked about the digital. This is the during 2019, 2020, where were we? Jewelry was almost less than 1%. CaratLane was almost 100% digital. They have just started few stores, but very low number of stores.
And watches was 9%, eye care 4%, and the emerging businesses, mostly women's bag, not women's bag, fragrances, et cetera, were there, which was 8%. And if you look at now, 2024, 20% of Titan sales is either on e-com or very, very influenced through the digital channel, the conversions are influenced. And how jewelry almost from 1%-15%, and CaratLane is there. The watches is in between 19% analog and 51%. So the digital channel, the whole omni stuff, the excess part which Venkat spoke about, the excess, available to T2, T3, T4 customers and everyone else, this is—this has enabled to a great extent. This is the retail footprint, how in last 5 years, and you will look at the graph, that first 2, 3 years of the...
which were COVID impacted, we were really slow. Stores were not expanding, but in last 2-3 years, it has really accelerated, whether addition of towns, whether addition of stores or whether the retail square feet area. So all have, you know, in last 2-3 years, really, we have accelerated. And again, by business, by segment, if you want to see, and there is again, 5-year, and then there is a 2-year, because real explosion in the, if explosion is too hard word, but real growth has happened in the last 2 years as far as retail, and this momentum is likely to continue. Now, moving on to profits, how EBIT has behaved. In FY 2019, we had INR 2,000 crore at a consolidated level, delivered 10.1%.
Now we are at 11%, INR 5,241 crore. Have grown faster than revenue. 19% was revenue CAGR, about 21% is EBIT CAGR. These are various businesses. Again, consolidated numbers, so jewelry, if you want to reconcile in your mind, 11.6% has CaratLane plus and international, which is right now, overall business level minus, and that is why 11.6%. The consolidated jewelry business of Titan has remained where it is. It was in FY 2019. Watches, again, every business have a story within, the EBIT things, which, which you might have picked up in the presentations. Jewelry would have a product mix issues. We talked about CaratLane and IBD at consolidated level.
Watches, the wearable going up from 3% to 14% part of the portfolio, you have seen that would have kind of created a little bit on the margin side. Eye care, you saw completely turning around as far as the profitability of the business is concerned, and that is where 0.5% to 11%. And emerging businesses, some are plus, some are minus, and that is where the emerging. This includes steel and TEAL, all those businesses. Further, drill down on margins. This is the gross margin story at the company level. We actually have come down from 28% to 26%, 220 basis points. And again, it has got business mix issue, which you saw jewelry becoming slightly more dominant. It has a product mix issue within businesses.
It has investment issues, which, Ajoy particularly spoken about what they are doing in the business. And it also has the tactical, offers, discount, exchange program, anything across businesses which we have done to ensure that we continue to grow, at a leadership pace. So that's the gross margin story. This is the total cost story. So we lost 220 basis points at gross margin level, but we gained 3.2% at fixed cost level. And that is where... And this focus is like, is going to continue. You picked up, of course, in watches presentation, Suparna talking about Project Alchemy and cost focus, but there's a huge renewed cost focus in the form of War on Waste 2.0.
People didn't speak about, but that's happening in jewelry, that's happening in eye care, and we are again relooking at that, how this can be further extracted. And this is how 2.2 going there, 3.2 kind of coming through operating leverage and extracting fixed costs, we delivered almost 1% higher on operating profit. I'll move on. This is the five-year cash flow, how where the money came from, how did it got invested. You can see roughly INR 18,000 crore of operating cash profit got generated in five years, and the working capital took INR 8,000 crore. We did CapEx on our existing business of INR 1,800 crore and paid taxes INR 4,000 crore. So INR 4,000 crore is the operating free cash flow, which got generated in last five years.
And after that INR 4,000 crore, of course, there are other elements. INR 2,800 crore is the dividend payment, INR 5,000 crore is the strategic investment, largely in CaratLane and some of the other stuff. We funded, for that, we have borrowed INR 6,200 crore, so net, INR 2,500 crore. So that's the five-year cash generation story. And all this profit, revenue growth, EBIT margin, slight improvement, and the cash flow generation has resulted in kind of maintaining healthy capital returns, which were there in 2019 or before that, and even. So things are not at odds, you know? It is not growth versus margin versus capital. I think if you work diligently, you can keep growing at a pretty fast clip.
You can deliver a bit on a sustained and stable basis, and you can maintain your capital efficiency. Not a very. I would not, you know, say that it's a very, very easy task, but yeah, if you are diligent about your execution and mindful about capital, these things are not difficult to deliver. And I will further dissect for you the return on average equity, because all of you know that there are these are the only three levers which kind of finally affect, which is how much you are sweating your assets, which is asset turnover, how your margin efficiencies are improving, which is the PAT margin 7%-7.4%, and how you are funding your assets. So if you will see from 2019 to 2024, we have increased our return on equity.
It has basically come through some improvement in margin, which is the efficiency of use of our resources, and some has come from the financial leverage, which we have created in the balance sheet. The asset efficiency has come down from 1.86 to 1.6. The dominant part of this inefficiency happened during COVID time, and this is the most stickiest thing to recover back, and particularly inventory turnover actually improved from FY 2023 to 2024, but this is the slowest to improve. You know, you can get back your growth, you can get back on margin track, but capital, the inventory norms, which kind of slowed down during COVID period, are gradually recovering, and I expect perhaps we can work on that and recover over next 2-3 years.
That should help the return on equity to further improve. Just summarizing, last five years, I had presented this slide last time also, that we grew 19% top line, profit after tax 20%, EBIT margin improved 90 basis points. We have demonstrated that for 15%-20% of organic growth, we really don't need to go outside for capital raising. Our internal cash is sufficient, our internal accruals are sufficient to help us to grow 15%-20% on organic basis. Yeah. Now I thought I'll just cover 2-3 more slides. There is some fine print below. Can you guys read it?
Yes.
The fine print is not readable, no? I borrowed this from your industry only, this fine print, so that you read and you understand. What I'm going to talk about is, So this is just summarization. You know, every presenter in some way or the other, particularly Venkat, Suparna, Ajoy, everyone, talked about that what is the large opportunity landscape where Titan is standing at? And the last point, market share is low single-digit or just high single-digit market share in various categories. And even if you remember Suparna's slide, that, fifty percent of watch market is on the top end of the premium and the bottom end. We are 50% market share at the bottom, which only represents 50%, and in that top end and bottom end, we are in single digits.
So there is a large opportunity there also. So otherwise, you know, sometimes we think in watch, we have a very, very dominant market and we cannot grow, because already sitting at 50%, how can you grow further? But there are two places which represents actually 50% of analog watch, where we just have 6%-7% market share. So that opportunity is across business divisions, and that's a very, very powerful opportunity. I will not talk more about this. There are strengths which have been demonstrated by all the presenters, all the businesses, and some of the newer businesses you would have seen how diligently and meticulously we are making that happen. It might be sometimes slower, particularly in Taneira, you would have picked up.
It is almost playbook of Tanishq Jewelry, which is in the play for the sari and ethnic wear business, which is in the making. And it, it takes time, but I think customers are loving it. We are internally loving it while creating it, and our viewers are loving it. So I think the whole value chain is getting very excited about that category. Dinesh spoke about how the same goodness is getting transported to international market and is working very well for us. Again, this is summarization of all the challenges which you heard through various presenters. I spoke about that macro environment has been tough. Going forward, it is not likely to be changing anywhere. We need to be used to stay in this kind of world and, and kind of, the competition, particularly in our...
Everywhere it is there, but particularly in jewelry right now at this point of time, it is at heightened level. Gold rate, we talked about. Product mix in jewelry, which I think Ajoy explained, that high gold rate in the diamond jewelry also it starts impacting margin. So some of these are the challenges around growth as well as margin, but I think we have far more offsets available with us, which actually weighs heavier than the challenges, and we believe we can kind of, going forward, take advantage of this. Premiumization is a really macro trend in a way in India, India story. International opportunity, you heard about it. We are addressing affordable mass fashion in eye care as well as in watches in a big way. Hopefully, you know, and I will cover that-...
We believe that in next 3-4 years, business mix, where emerging businesses will perhaps contribute slightly higher than what they are doing right now. And again, the whole thing can start shifting back, where international business and Taneira and women's bag, et cetera, will contribute much more in terms of financial and, yeah. So, you know, I was doing your work, at least I was trying to think that what are the questions which you would have about us? And, you might have got answers of many, so I just thought I'll also attempt and maybe add to some of those thinking, and then, let us see. I think the biggest question in your mind is that, is jewelry margin pressure is temporary, or it is kind of how long it will last?
Frankly speaking, we also don't have a precise answer to this, but we believe, Ajoy presented in detail, that there are offsets available to us. We are doing. We have built a very, very, solid brand, which customers love. The GC Max program takes some time to kind of rebalance the gold and diamond equation in diamond jewelry. And with all those things, we believe, it might take, 3 quarters, 5 quarters, we don't know, but, but it should certainly come back to the trajectory, where it used to be. I think Suparna answered that 12%-14% is the first milestone where, where we are trying to get. Growth is working well. You, you thought in eye care, what about growth? What about margin? Both things have been answered by Saumen very well. Growth is last 4, 5 months.
Of course, we need to sustain more, but I think we have a very, very positive early experience of whatever we have done. Margin is always good story. If growth comes in eye care, margin would come. Is international business profitable? Because that's growing fast, and you are worried that will it be a drag on us or it... So store level, all international stores are generally equally profitable and sometimes more profitable than India. But at a business level, it is, it is yet to become profitable, and I thought I will summarize some of these things in the... So what is our priority? Our priority is growth for these businesses, and we want to deliver a stable margin. So these are the margin bands. They will grow at 15%-20%. Hopefully, they will work on these margin bands.
They will try to sometime go towards over 2-3-year period. I would imagine they will try to go towards the higher end of the band. As far as the emerging businesses are concerned, the priority is to scale up these businesses. So they are expected to grow 30%-40%, for sure. They can do it. Their aspirations are actually even higher than that, but 30%-40%, they would grow. And the whole pack, you know, some of the businesses are already profitable or breaking even. Fragrances business is already profitable, but as a pack, I'm saying by FY 2027, they will certainly be breaking even as a consolidated level. Respect for cash and capital would continue, so we will be every time very mindful that our ROC is always 30%+.
So that's the summarization and, you know, outlook. I was just thinking after this, do we need a Q&A session? Thank you, guys.
You know, first of all, thank you so much for, you know, great presentations. And definitely, every time I come here and listen to the communication you make with customers and consumers, it dazzles us with the emotional connect that Titan makes and continues to make, so congratulations for that. My question is obviously jewelry, and, you know, I'll probably ask a little bit, couple of more questions, jewelry, and I can ask a couple of more if I have the time, but in the interest of time, I'll stick to jewelry first. Now, this year, competition has been, you know, a kind of buzzword that has increased, and I've heard repeated mentions of competition rising.
I relate with it, that a lot of regional brands have started the template that you have provided for network expansion and kind of how they, you know, pricing and capital, like, network rollout, all the rest of it. And you sort of now alluded to lower margins as well. My worry is that this margin of 12%-13% also a bit of a one-off for a few years. It was 10%, 11%, and then we had 12%, 13% margin. My worry is that, is this competition will come at that expense? There's a clear trade-off between how margins will appear and how the growth will be maintained. Do we see a risk here that to maintain 15%-20%, it will come at increasing cost, and this 12% guidance is not sacrosanct?
So my worry is that whether are we seeing more pressure?
You want me to respond?
No, I think it's a valid question. Ashok's summary kind of, I thought, covered it. I believe there will be some, there will be some interim fluctuation that you can expect, because every time, because it's not just competitive intensity.
Mm.
I think the greater forces at play are the rising gold rate. One element of that is competitive intensity, but I think there's an impact of that on the gross margin, especially on the studded side. And unlike many, you know, there was one hypothesis somebody had asked me in the previous investor call, saying that when gold prices go up, does studded pick up because gold becomes expensive? Actually, it's counterintuitively, it goes the other way around.
Right.
Even the studded kind of remains a little low, and then once the people get, you know, happy with the gold rate, they're saying, "This is what it will be," people come back in. Actually, gold rate affects both segments. So actually it's more the gold rate volatility and the gold rate elevation which requires... And it is not just us, it is everybody in the market. Any competitor is facing the same situation. All brands will face the same situation whenever gold prices go up. So, you know, I think that's part of life, and we will continue to... As I said, we owe it to ourselves to ensure that we remain in that margin profile, because that's what good execution is about.
Sure.
But, you know, the future is always unpredictable, and it's our job as management to try and make that happen the way we believe it should happen. I don't know what better answer I can give you, but maybe, Ashok, if you have something else you want to add.
But we have gone through... You know, I don't want to add this hedging bit of it, on this, that sometimes sudden spike may give some people sitting on good gains, which they can again use for, dear customer offers, et cetera. But that has happened multiple times, so, you know, and we have come out every time with good basis of completely remaining hedged all the time and is still delivering much better margin compared to industry. So why this time it would be different? So but, you know, those also adds to some of the forces when gold price all of a sudden goes up. But, yeah.
Thanks so much, and sorry for asking this question. You had covered it, I know. But what I'm really asking is that whether as the competitive intensity has risen at the margin and probably will rise, does it have a pricing, kind of you have to respond to pricing? Is it happening at the real time? What I'm asking is, as you look at pricing of others and yours, do you feel the need to respond time and again?
No, I don't think it's about responding to pricing. It's about ensuring that we, at the prices at which we operate, we ensure that we claw back the gross margins, and then operating efficiencies and other war on waste helping us to lift the EBIT. It's not about suddenly giving a discount and suddenly making an offer here and there. No. That bit is sometimes in some quarters, it may be up and down, but that's not the big worry.
Got it. So that's very, very helpful. The second question I have is on lab-grown diamonds. Clearly, you have, you know, given a good perspective from the U.S. market and how it is, you know, part of the bridal piece quite a lot. And you also allude to that Indian market is where, you know, it is seen as storage of wealth, and people are worried about whether wealth is part of the equation. My question is that isn't this then a large opportunity for Titan? Because Titan can, in fact, stand as a guarantor of or a market making, that if you stay within my system of buying and selling, this price or this value is guaranteed. While if you go outside that, I cannot guarantee that, but if you are buying and selling within my system, it is, it is...
So it's in a way that lab-grown diamond, even if it's sort of theoretically it may be going down because of the excess supply. But if Titan were to control that ecosystem within its own customers and suppliers, wouldn't that be a way to monetize this? I don't know whether you get my question, but what I'm saying is that you guarantee a buying price, and you sell, and then customer stays within Titan's ecosystem if they buy lab-grown diamonds.
See, it's difficult to control the prices of lab-grown diamonds, because the entire ecosystem is not determined by what India does.
Mm.
Okay? I mean, 85% of lab-grown diamonds or 90% of lab-grown diamonds are sold in the U.S.-
Right
as we speak, and there's a lot of investment that is constantly happening in lab-grown, despite the excess capacity that has got built. And the way in which the growers will amortize their investments will determine the price at which they can sell. Marginal prices, they can be enough. There are enough and more price warriors sitting there, huge players. So frankly speaking, you really can't control the prices. In fact, I think with technology, the prices will fall even further.
Yes.
So when prices keep falling at that rate, there is no way in which you can assure any price, store or value for the customer. It may surprise many of you that even for small diamonds, the customer values the price at which she has bought it and feels very uncomfortable if she comes to realize that there may be no value to it. Many a times, customers come to us with studded products they bought from some other players in the past, some independent jewelers, whatever, and they say- and then we say: Really, we can't accept this because this is something which we really don't know how to value unless we remove the stones and see what it is.
Sure.
They are extremely disappointed when they go back to their respective, you know, jeweler whom they bought from. Even for very small diamonds, you know, we are talking about, one cent and two cents and three cents. Forget the one carat, which is a hundred cents. So there is a very strong value orientation in Asian markets towards precious jewelry. And for whatever it's worth, diamond-studded jewelry is seen as a very integral part of precious jewelry. So until that mindset itself changes towards you know, this is something which can be a use and throw or become an adornment play, and sure, there'll be some people who will do that. The question is, is the opportunity far larger than the huge risk of dilution of what might happen with your natural business, which we have seen very strongly happening in the US?
We need to think about both. If the opportunity really turns out to be so big and exciting, nothing stops us from making some play with some brand in some form. But right now, as we see it, there is no dramatic and great advantage in being an early mover, because the opportunity will never run away. It can be captured whenever we want, but the risk of, you know, impacting our existing businesses can be very, very high. We have seen it happen in a big way. Value erosion can be a real threat and possibility, and the entire jewelry industry is actually worried. Even the diamond traders who have invested both are most worried about that, because they worry about what will happen to their entire business.
So I think this is a very tricky situation, and it's not unlike a technology oriented product, where there are significant first mover advantages in terms of learning and adapting and then thereafter. Here, it is ultimately an adornment play. It may not be that complex to solve for it whenever we think it's critical to solve for it. So to be honest, saying anything more at this stage doesn't make sense, and we'll come back to you whenever we think there's something to share.
Sure, that's very helpful. Thanks so much, Ajoy. Yeah.
Hi. Here towards the back. Hi. This is Arturo from Motilal Oswal Asset Management. So I have a follow-up on the lab-grown business. So like we've seen, say, in the last decade and a half with, say, CaratLane evolution, where you had a new channel which came into being and which today, like, say, CaratLane, is an INR 3,000 crore business for us. So wouldn't you think that, maybe not to impact your existing business at Tanishq or the other stores in the jewelry business, but don't you think in the lab-grown business, it's time to incubate another brand, which at least sets the ball rolling?
Because if some of these things get big, I'm sure there is enough amount of venture capital money, basically, who's trying to find and fund ideas in this space, and there will be another CaratLane or another Blue Stone which will emerge in the lab-grown space. So why not incubate a brand, by ourselves, rather than maybe, at a later stage, looking out, or maybe partnering with anybody? So maybe any opinion on that, sir.
We take that as an input. I don't have an opinion on that.
Let us take his name and address, and we call him in our strategy discussion next time, whenever we are discussing this topic. So anyway-
And secondly, sir, in terms of the jewelry business margin. So, in terms of when we talk to some of your franchisee owners, et cetera, generally, it doesn't seem that the brand that Tanishq is, there is price sensitivity to the customer who's walking in your store. Like, all the videos that we saw, there is an emotion attached to the brand, right? So, so in your opinion, where is the issue coming in in terms of the margin in the jewelry business? What is the biggest, in terms of, hindrance to perhaps maintaining or growing margins in jewelry business? Thanks.
I think we clarified both in the presentation and again, the previous question, that the larger part of the margin pressures come when gold rates rise very, very high, and when there is sentiment impacted by, you know, what is the kind of product mix that you can deliver. That's the bigger piece. That's why it was bolder in my, you know, pressure. And the competitive intensity is a part of life. Life goes on. Now, it doesn't mean because life goes on, customers are happy to pay, continue to pay more and more premium. You know, we already add a significant premium to the market, and in which case, the customer also is looking at jewelry as an important piece of investment from their angle. Even if it's adornment, they want it to be an investment. So they also think a lot about making charges.
They also think about, okay, how much are you charging for the, you know, per diamond, carat rate, et cetera, et cetera. So we cannot ignore what customers feel, irrespective of what competitors are doing or not doing, irrespective of the premium. We still have a premium over the gold rate compared to virtually all players in every market. Even after hallmarking, we have a premium. So there is an extent to which premiums can keep rising, and especially when you think about it this way: let's say when gold price was at INR 3,000-INR 4,000 a gram, and let's say making charge for that at 15%, let's take 20% rounded figure, was maybe INR 800-INR 1,000, you know, per gram.
Now, that same product, assuming with some inflation thrown in, now, if you're going to charge 20% of INR 7,200, and it's INR 1,500 per gram more, and if there is a 10-gram product. So the impact is there on the customer. And, therefore, you know, it's not that the premium customers don't want a discount. In fact, the most requests I get is from premium customers to share their, my discount coupon.... So I think, the value orientation of the Indian consumer and the hard reality in the way in which jewelry is bought, where everybody knows the bill of material of the product that we are selling, is a hard truth of this market and this category. We cannot ignore it. If we ignore it, we ignore it at our own peril.
And certainly, if you're talking about regionalization and going into markets which are much smaller towns, where the growth opportunities are coming, certainly there is more sensitivity because a traditional customer there is a gold customer. For them to first come in and think about Tanishq, yes, aspiration is there, but am I afraid to walk into a Tanishq store because, my God, their prices are so high or their making charges are so high? You know, those are questions that we answer all the time. So it is a balance. I think, you know, you just can't command infinite premium, and there is a limit to which we think we should be able to judge where we should pitch it.
Hi, sir.
Yeah.
Hi, this is Abhir from Macquarie. So yeah. Yeah. So I want to just switch gears and probably focus on the watch business. Now, if I look at the 2022 analyst meet, which we had done, we had given a guidance on not just the expectation that we can have from a UCP perspective, but also the margin expectation. Versus that level, we have toned it down. Now, does that indicate, A, that the nature of the industry requires a lot more near-term investments, or is that—are you essentially delaying that 18%, or do you see this as structurally a 15%, you know, kind of that is the margin structure, given variables is going to be a larger share? So would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Yeah, thank you. It is somewhat like that. You know, when I had shared the 18%, it was a very high bar that we had put. And then over the next 2 years, we internally also saw that we were chasing growth, and it is difficult to keep both growth and margin at that kind of, you know, sky-high number. At this point, we are internally still focusing on more than 14%. There are multiple, you know, dimensions. Certainly, variables being a larger part, which has a lower margin, is very much part of that. But I think from the time that we had outlined the dream to now, the number of balls in play and the interplay between that is not fully clear.
For example, that time, our focus on premium was not that high. Now we know premium is a very big opportunity. We have- we are taking very big and bold moves there. Premium, our premium brands are at a very healthy margin. Having said premium, retail will be at a different margin profile. So of the multiple growth levers that we are chasing, how actually it pans out is hard for us to predict, but certainly that's why we have toned it down to, you know, that number.
The second part, I mean, from a medium-term perspective, leave aside the 27, but do you see structurally this as a different margin business than what you earlier envisaged? Or you still retain that maybe 18% will come in probably, you know, 3, 4 years further down the line or something like that?
I think 18% is hard.
Okay.
What could be if all guns are firing, and especially analog, mainline analog and premium analog, are doing very well, it could cross 14 and go to maybe 15 or 16.
Got it. And the second bit, just a clarification to Ajoy. Sorry, I'm bringing it back to the discounting, clarifying it here. What I'm hearing from you on the discounting pressures, and if I... Please correct me, is there seems to be, I mean, is the understanding that the customer is willing to pay an X percentage or X rupees premium for the superior design, and beyond which it is becoming harder? Because, see, the periods of high, in, you know, gold price increase in a quarter or periods wherein there is volatility, we've seen that even earlier. I mean, and thankfully, we have Venkat here, so I can always reach out to him to share his earlier experiences, but you've seen this earlier. And we haven't had a comment where high gold inflation is a cause of concern for margins earlier.
It was expected that high gold prices should aid leverage to some extent or could aid leverage. So I'm trying to understand, is this not just because your comments seem to indicate when you talk about the INR 1,000-INR 1,500 price point, you seem to suggest a customer concern or willingness being a question mark, or am I reading too much into it? Would love to hear your thoughts on that.
I think I shared what... I'm not sure what more comments I can offer other than the fact that there is a limit to which you can keep commanding a premium on a continuous basis in a very short period of time. Just, you know, imagine if gold prices go up by 5% in a span of one quarter, then the customer is certainly going to ask that question. And it is not just the... You know, it is not that gold prices have seen this kind of more than doubling in five years, and you know, you're talking about a 15%-20% jump in gold prices, so it's unprecedented. I don't know whether we've had instances, Venkat, of where gold prices have been clamp, you know, galloping at this rate and whether we had that. That is one part of the story.
The second part is that when gold prices go up so dramatically, on the studded side, because of the mix of different, let's say, elements between gold and studded, there is an impact on the gross margin, and that gross margin certainly starts showing up as pressure, we climb back from it. So I'm not sure what exactly you're kind of alluding to. Maybe I've not got your.
No, no.
Question properly. Maybe Venkat might be able to answer some of this better.
Yeah. See, if you go back ten years, certainly. Yeah, ten years, certainly, the nature of competition for Tanishq was much less muted. Today, I mean, if, if you go to a city like Ahmedabad, and you look at a brand like Kalam andir, okay? Now, Kala mandir, and given the entry barriers in this industry being low, today, anybody actually can come in and set up a beautiful store, start buying, you know, at least on the surface, exquisite jewelry, have a store experience which is reasonable. The brand may not at all be strong, but from a store of value point of view, from an adornment point of view, you know, start running the business adequately.
From those customers to whom value is more important than brand, status, and all that, start making a difference to a brand like Tanishq, which needs to acquire new customers also all the time for growth. So therefore, whether it is the gold rate markup, which we used to enjoy, you know, at a very high differential 10 years back, or even the ability to keep increasing the making charges, which again, you know, we could do at a greater rate earlier, those advantages have reduced when you have those 40 competitors that Ajoy was referring to across the country. And that is what reduces the premium and puts pressure on the gross margin, and finally, on the EBIT margin, as we are talking about today.
So the gold rate has a bearing on the diamond jewelry margin, particularly, and also when the gold rate is so high, the making charges are now, you know, INR 1,000+ and all that, and therefore, we can't... You know, it's not a discounting as much as the ability to keep that difference continuing. So we have to sort of, in a way, bring down, that, that 20% may have to become as a 19%, for example. It's not a discount, but a price correction to remain competitive and remain, you know, offer value for money. So certainly, that situation is rather different today compared to 10 years back, and the gold rate has one role to play, but the increasing competitive situation also has a big role to play. And he also spoke about, therefore, the need to widen the moat.
The moat has become narrower, and we need to invest in multiple things to widen that moat so that over a slightly longer term, we reach back, we claw back part of, in a way, what we have lost.
And this would logically be... I mean, when you say GC reset, it, a, could be just a pricing action or could be in the form of just product launches. Is that the right way to think about this, or is that lever not the relevant lever anymore, the pace of new launches? I'm just trying to understand. See, when you say 3-5 quarters, one is just hoping for things to turn around, but clearly, you have levers that you have shown historically in terms of the way you moved margins or the way you've been able to invest for growth properly. And I'm just trying to appreciate how this situation could be different or is not different.
Maybe, you know, I'll add one or two more flavors to this. See, when we want to grow, we also said we have to grow by gaining share from the unorganized sector and by penetrating more. Most of the growth, which segments do you think it's coming from? The very profitable segments or the very high-premium segments? Secondly, even from a product, in studded, you have to grow the category. Finally, studded, you know, our sense is it's INR 75,000 crore, out of that INR 525,000 crore. So the growth opportunity is also coming from some of the segments which can be margin dilutive, and the extent to which you can correct that portion by taking premiums elsewhere is not that straightforward. In terms of launches, your point is well taken.
In fact, we are constantly launching products and collections, and we've shown you only one or two, just, you know, from the interest of time. We launched more than 15, 20 collections and drops right through the year, and our entire exercise is being able to create delight through design and craftsmanship and engineering, to be able to even extract more value. So and customers do appreciate that. So that's an engine which is running at a certain pace, and that continues. So that lever remains. In fact, there were many levers which I showed on the right side, which will help us. So in my mind, it's not a hope. I feel you're being a little harsh in your judgment that you're hoping that three, five quarter
One more point, Ajoy, if I can add, that if you look at the jewelry portfolio, there are two clear items where profitability should keep improving. You know, the CaratLane piece, they will grow faster than the flagship, which is Tanishq, and their margin profile also should improve because they are in that trajectory. International business, again, that is growing faster than-
... the main Tanishq, while still they are small in the overall thing, but they are certainly going to improve margin irrespective of what's happening in the environment. So with some pluses and minuses, and that is where when we gave our, the last slide, you know, that reflects that. You know, that, that's a consolidated level. We believe that's the margin profile we should still able to maintain.
Yeah. Hi, sir. This is Percy Panthaki here from IIFL. Two questions from my side. First is on the wedding jewelry piece. So I believe, as a percentage of the total industry, wedding jewelry would be close to about 50%. For us, it's somewhere in the early 20s. Even three or four years ago, we had highlighted wedding as an area of focus. However, the contribution has not gone up quite materially versus that time. So what is the reason that we are not seeing that kind of traction? Is it that Tanishq as a brand stands for something particular which does not resonate with the occasion of wedding, or is there some other reason?
What can you do to bring up the contribution in some material way, like cross 30% in 3 or 5 years? Is it possible? What kind of inputs do you need? That's question number one. Question number two is on the international piece. So obviously, right now, you will be catering largely to the Indian diaspora. Although you have 70 other nationalities, the Pareto would be very large, and most of it would be Indian diaspora. How fast do you think you can make this brand more of a global brand, appealing to audiences in general across nationalities? And what do you need to do in order to happen, in order for that to happen? Is it just a matter of time?
Is it, is it something that can work out only over a couple of decades, or is it something that you can sort of hasten that process? Yeah, those are my two questions. Thank you.
On the wedding piece, I'll answer, and I'll leave Dinny to answer the international piece. Wedding is a challenging segment. We've always been wanting to grow faster in wedding compared to the rest of the brand. That has always been our intent, and we seem to be making progress, but at a slower pace. In the percentage contribution, it doesn't show up because some of the percentage contribution is on the total piece. As I said, in the last five years, even coins have grown at a certain rate. So, you know, then when you look at it as a percentage of jewelry, there is improvement, actually. But it's not the way we would probably want the contribution to grow. That's an honest answer.
It requires a lot of hard work of being able to do very community and subcommunity-level work on product while trying to be fairly competitive. Because in wedding, when imagine people are buying INR 30 lakhs, INR 40 lakhs, INR 20 lakhs, fifty lakhs of jewelry, the local jeweler is able to... Because they know the person, they are able to give them some kind of a, you know, overall discount, et cetera, which is much, much higher. And frankly, at that point in time, the wedding jewelry purchase starts behaving a little bit like a B2B kind of business because, you know, bulk purchase is happening. We also have, you know, clubbing, and we also have some volume discounts.
But for us to be able to, let's say, give discounts to the extent that, you know, you accumulate it over six months or eight months of purchase and then get something out of it, not easy as a chain and as an organized player. That's, that's one part of the story. But the deep subcommunity-level products that we need to create and then ensure that these turn at a certain rate, and, you know, unlike a local jeweler who doesn't think about stock turns, and they don't see inventory as a problem that needs to turn, but inventory as wealth, which will keep growing. Whereas we will provide for it, we will melt it, because, you know, we are operating in a different perspective.
So therefore, the rules of engagement are different, and therefore, our ability to kind of, you know, ramp it up at that pace is a challenge. Having said that, as I shared in the presentation, whichever regional markets we have gone with an integrated play, whether it is Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, some of the Bharat markets, West Bengal, we are seeing that wedding actually enables us, and the contribution in wedding is from a dispersion point of view, actually... You know, for example, in TN, it's 25%+ versus the 20% that you keep hearing. So it's a longest journey, but the good part is the rest of the brand is also growing at a certain pace. So it's not that that is holding up the overall growth of the brand. But the opportunity remains, and it's a perennial action.
We have taken a lot of work on products, on retail, you know, in giving certain dedicated spaces. We have invested in the brand Rivaah. We are working on multiple communities. So perhaps one has to be a little bit more patient on this, is the best I can say.
So what-
One other-
What would you expect as time period by which the contribution can cross, let's say, 30%?
One other perspective, Percy, I would like to share here, not enough data, but it's more an intuitive point, is that, the share of wedding jewelry in the middle and lower middle-class homes-
... I feel is likely to be much higher than 50%. Because of the store of value aspect of gold jewelry, particularly, somebody who is, you know, really middle class and below, is putting all the family money into that stridhan as the bride is going away. So, I mean, just imagine if that contributes to 60%-70% of the total jewelry purchase of that home, and that's weighting the total down to the 50. Which means that as I move up in the income classes, it actually starts dropping from 50 to maybe 40 or 35. Because, like, for example, in our cases, we would buy a lot of jewelry for self-use, for our own, you know, social wear, party wear, and all that kind of thing.
Therefore, the comparison of the 20 of Tanishq with the 50 of the industry has got this very important aspect which we need to consider. What to me would be the right metric or right understanding is the customers of Tanishq, are they buying all their wedding jewelry from Tanishq? That would be the right measure. If they are buying, then even if it is 30%, it is 30%, because their own wedding jewelry behavior is like that.
Maybe that is something that we need to understand better and measure rather than worry about it, even as, you know, the division is pushing for a greater growth, but not get spooked by this difference and say, "We are not at all playing that well." Because in actual feedback on the ground, when you speak to the staff and the partners about how well we are doing on wedding, it is not like this, what this 20 and 50 suggests.
Got it, sir.
On international?
Yeah, on international, to answer that question, I'll first take you back 17 years to 2007, when Tanishq actually opened 2 stores in the U.S., in Chicago and New Jersey, aimed at international customers. We created a terrific line of products, built wonderful stores, and launched that. But there it was a struggle because of the unfamiliarity of the brand with customers, so this is a journey that will take time. However, what is happening today, we, and therefore, we decided to start with the Indian diaspora customers as the beachhead to establish, make a successful business. However, if you look at the locations where we are present, and we... First store was in Meena Bazaar, which is a very Indian-dominated Indian market. But if I take Qatar, we have 2 stores in Qatar. One is located in a LuLu, which is again, Indian-dominated.
But the second Qatar store is located in the Doha Festival City Mall, which is not necessarily an Indian location, and that has a 30% share of non-Indian customers walking in and buying products. All the mall stores that we have, the share of non-Indians is between 15%-30%. This is without adapting or changing the product significantly to cater to what, say, an Arab or an Emirati customer or an American customer would want. So yes, we would need to, one, adapt and get into the locations where non-Indians are present and move out of the purely Indian locations. Second, we would need to adapt the products, give them what they are looking for.
Some of the products that we have, like the Duologue product that I showed, which is the premium wear, are actually working very well, both for Indian Gen 2 customers as well as for Western customers. They're not really, in that sense, that different. And similarly, the Indian HNIs who are buying Zoya, again, are not very different from other people or Western customers who would buy similar products. And therefore, those kind of products that we already have, like Zoya, et cetera, cross over faster. Even, let's say, some of CaratLane's designs. So the first CaratLane store that we are opening will be in Oak Tree Road, which is again, an Indian locality, but the second store we will open will be in Jersey City, in the Newport Mall, and that would again have a large bunch of non-Indians coming in there.
I think a combination of these two things. How much we accelerate this is in some form up to us, and it is also dependent on how soon we want to kind of push this envelope, how ready we are. But it's not 20 years. I think in a matter of 3-5 years, we should have a very, very strong play among non-Indians as well.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Hi. Sheela Rathi from Morgan Stanley. So it feels like that, gold exchange has become a very regular feature, as we see the trends over the last 12-15 months. So just wanted to understand, what are the strategic business-level, store-level changes which we are implementing right now, to embrace this? Also, what is our comfort level with respect to gold exchange? You know, we are at about 40%. And what suits us in terms of until non-Tanishq gold exchange remains high, are we more comfortable taking that number higher, or is there any other thought process here?
So gold exchange, we see as a strategic driver to bring in more customers, and that has played out pretty well. I shared in that engine that it has sustained, and it has remained, you know... The non-Tanishq gold is about 30 to 30 to 33% also at times, and the Tanishq exchange is the, about-
... you know, 10%-11%, it varies. So it's actually slowly climbed up to 42-43. Again, on an annualized basis, it kind of gravitates around that piece. We are comfortable. In fact, we think it's a good thing to increase exchange. We encourage exchange from a messaging point of view, both at the store level as well as, you know, ATL and digital, et cetera. And we are happy if people come back and exchange their locker gold or old gold. Firstly, when they experience exchange, the customer says, you know, she gets-- she goes completely gaga over the transparency of the policy, and we've certainly got the best exchange policy. So we would love more and more customers to experience exchange, whether gold exchange or even Tanishq exchange.
In Tanishq exchange, they also see the benefit of price increase on diamonds, and therefore they, you know, they say only a Tata company can, you know, give us this kind of clarity. So actually, we are very happy. We would like to continue to... In fact, we would love to increase it. Strategically, we would see if it can go to 40, 50, 60, you know. There was one conversation internally when somebody had asked us, "When can, you know, you be 100% exchange, recycled gold?" Because that's good for the planet, good for the country, good for the customer, so it has to be good for us as well. So actually, we think it's a great opportunity to keep on doing this because there's so much gold lying in lockers, and the more we can actually get it to become adornment-oriented, it's even better.
Because, you know, instead of keeping gold... A lot of customers are very happy doing that. I don't know if I've answered all your questions, but I think we will continue to push that button, and we believe it's a very important lever in our growth strategy, and it's good for all stakeholders.
Just to follow up here, is that one of the reasons why the gross margin number was looking lower over the last four years?
No, not really. Because what we also see when exchange happens, by and large, people also, you know, there is an upselling or there is an additional purchase. It's not that they come in with 10 grams and go with 10 grams of gold jewelry, or they tend to actually buy much more. So that's not a big swinger, actually, in the gross margin. It isn't. We are happy with gross margin performance.
My, my second and final question, Ashokji did say that, you know, we'll respect cash and capital allocation, but over the next three, four years, do we see any further inorganic opportunities for us to adorn women even more?
So in the same categories where we are playing, yes, we are open to that. We are not a very, very aggressive acquiring company that you know from our track record, but, but we will keep evaluating in various categories where we are operating in, because that could be one good lever for scaling up some of the small businesses also. Of course, in jewelry also, we are not saying complete no, that if there is opportunity to kind of entrench our brands either internationally or somewhere else. So, so that's, that is how we think about inorganic opportunity, that it is going to play some role in our growth and portfolio play going forward. Yeah.
So the category-
... The category expertise that we have developed in all the lines in which we operate, so that becomes a starting point for evaluation of the opportunity, because that category expertise is the foundation on which the acquisition can benefit from. Whereas if it is outside the categories, then we have nothing really to add other than maybe name, money, and stuff like that, and therefore, that doesn't make sense.
Hi, sir, this is Mihir here. Mihir Shah from Nomura. So if you could talk a little bit about the impact of mandatory gold hallmarking on jewelry. How is that shaping up? Is it that the cost of production for the unorganized players is increasing? Or given that, given the mandatory hallmarking is there, the gold, perceived gold is much more purer than historically that, you know, that the consumers were getting, and hence it is creating an equal playing field. So no longer the Karatmeter that we had historically holds relevance, and everybody says that, you know, we have similar gold. So how is that shaping up, and on which side are you seeing the mandatory hallmark impacting? So that's my first question.
So I don't have an answer on your first part of the question, which is to say, is the cost of, you know, production for unorganized players going up because of hallmarking? To some extent, but some of it has got offset by the huge increases in gold rate increases and holding they have. You know, they don't hedge their gold, and most of them treat it as wealth. So I'm not sure how those pluses and minuses have played out there. I think from what we understand, certainly, virtually all organized players, whether regional or national or even the emerging players, are following hallmarking to the T. They are not taking a chance with, you know, purity. Some of them also have Karat meters.
But even today, when people come into our stores with old gold, there are enough. The average gold melting that we see is much lower purity than what they have. So there is enough and more historical gold available, as well as in certain smaller towns and many markets, there is still some degree of impurity, because even the UID piece of, you know, that hallmarking, while it has been now announced, it is not necessarily being adhered to 100%. You know, we don't know what the percentage is, is it 60%, 70%, 50%? Even when I checked with World Gold Council people and other industry folks, the data is not very easy to get because it requires a lot of monitoring and management by Bureau of Indian Standards and so on and so forth.
Now, is therefore Kara meter and purity, hygiene and, you know, factor? Perhaps when it comes to organized players, yes. But since the opportunity even organized, is only about 33% of the overall piece. So I think it still holds a lot of merit. And in fact, whenever we go into newer markets and newer towns and smaller towns, we actually encourage our stores to tell people to bring in their old gold, and then they get totally, you know, enamored by it. Even when people come into our existing towns, when they come in and we measure and we do it—it's a big integral player in the gold exchange, you know, program that we spoke a little while ago. So I think it still has enough juice, given where we stand.
But yes, over a period of time, very long period of time, purity, then, you know, the trust out of purity, maybe moves into trust out of exchange and other things.
Also, you know, it took 25 years after the launch of Tanishq for this hallmarking to come in, and the implicit faith in Tanishq and Tata that was developed, built over these 25 years, is not going to be touched by... You know, I know that this jeweler was gypping me all this while, and now the government has come in and making that company offer 22-carat pure, but Tanishq was doing it much before that. So that thing is one. The other is, I mean, Tanishq is no longer only about purity. I remember in the early 2010s, I mean, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, when I used to meet customers, and I would ask them: "Why do you buy Tanishq?" And the first reason used to be, purity, Tata.
Over time, in my own customer meetings, over time, it started becoming more and more design, more and more brand, and those are not there with those jewelers. Even if they're offering 22-carat pure through hallmarking today, the reasons have shifted to, "Why are you buying?" Like, like Tanishq gets me like nobody does. So whatever carat purity you're offering, you're not getting me, right? Tanishq is getting me. So the battlefield has also shifted.
Yeah. I also wanted to add one more piece, you know, in relating to the question. It's not just design, it's design, quality, finish, consistency, policies, the entire value chain. Because customers have said: "We love your, not just your design, but the finish." The kind of antique finish, the articulation of the product, even in gold, you know? I'm not even referring to studded, I'm referring to even in gold, is of higher order. And we have invested a lot of energy in ensuring that this entire quality system is working exceptionally well across not just our own manufacturing setup, but across the many vendor partner setups.
So in fact, vendors tell us, "Yeah, Tanishq," where they're doing multiple brands work, "This is where Tanishq happens, and those karigars are very different, and this is where the rest of it happens." So that's another piece which stands out, not just the design. You know, I was referring to one of the other questions which came up as to how come, what, what enables us to command premium?
Understood. Ajoy, just to elaborate on my first point, ceteris paribus, right? If the hedging by the gold inflation is not benefiting the unorganized guys, would the making charges for them increase because of all these new norms that they have to adhere to, and hence, the gap between what the, you know... Like for example, me, Shayon Sons Jewelers, can command now, versus what Tanishq was commanding earlier, the gap can reduce, because they have to increase their making charge. Can that be a possibility in the future, when gold prices are stable and benefits are not there?
Possible. Right now, we have not seen that. Because in the increasing number of competition, they also want to hold on to their customers, and in many markets, they don't operate on percentage still. Unorganized also still operates on rupees per gram. So, you know, maybe in the future, yes. Many of the organized players have moved towards percentage, but the unorganized guys, it's a mix, mixed bag.
Understood. So my second question is on Golden Harvest. Maybe if you can just talk about, you know, 30% of your sales is coming from tier 2, 3, 4. How is adoption of Golden Harvest in that region? And because it used to be a important customer acquisition tool for you, and we've not talked about it, you know, so maybe that a little bit.
Yeah. It continues to be a very strong lever. In fact, our enrollments have gone up significantly. It's a very big building block in our monthly, quarterly, annual targeting. We clearly see a correlation wherever stores are able to enroll customers in Golden Harvest, they get off on a very strong wicket. One of the people who really led Golden Harvest to where it is, is sitting right next to me. You know, it was amazing, the kind of work that's happened. And we have actually seen fantastic. I'd shown it as a green on the engine, and even in smaller towns, it's very important. So full thrust on. It's a monthly, weekly conversation that happens in all the reviews and conversations that go on.
Hi, all. Thank you, thank you, Ajoy. The conversations are getting more engaging. We will just take two more questions in the interest of having a fantastic lunch as well. I'll take one from here, where there are a lot of hands that are there. We can probably network outside as well. We'll just take two from here, and one gentleman here, please. Yeah, thank you.
I'll just keep one question, and that's more a clarification. I'm Latika from JP Morgan. Ajoy, you know, over the last five years, if you just strip out this recent spike in gold prices, has the margin gap between studded jewelry and gold jewelry narrowed for you? And when you talked about a 12% margin, you know, where Tanishq margins are gonna get anchored, we'll just keep CaratLane away from it. What kind... Are you working with a stable studded share? Or in a way, I want to ask, do you really worry about whether the studded share in your mix, you know, could drop below this 28%-30%, you know, where it's been fairly stable of late.
You talked about a 19% CAGR and an 18% CAGR, you know, 5 years for gold and diamonds. So is this something that, you know, you're mindful of? Is it a scenario that, you know, you're building in this 12% anchoring margin?
Yeah, we are mindful of it. Has the margin reduced, I mean, the dispersion between the gold and diamond? No, I think it's pretty much significant difference between the two segments in terms of gross margins. Are we mindful of the importance of studded contribution? Yes, we are. And I think we will manage, because we've been. So, you know, one of the other things that we migrated in the past on gold rate, with gold rate markups come down, we managed to migrate towards higher product mix and making charge contribution. We are doing some work on modern gold and other areas in the product mix, which is enabling us to command. So there are many levers at play.
I think we are very mindful of it, and we think including whatever we see happening, we should be able to manage that, a bit where we indicated.
That's good to know. Thank you.
Hi. Thank you. This is Bhavya from Dalal & Broacha. A small question with respect to CaratLane. So their average selling price is closer to INR 30,000-INR 40,000, right? In a similar price range, I mean, if an aspirational youth is getting maybe an LGD ring worth INR 40,000-INR 50,000, right, do we see any demand shifting? Because on the diamond side, we are not hedged, I believe. On gold, we are 100% hedged. From natural diamond, say, for example, in INR 30,000-INR 40,000, he's getting cut diamonds when it comes to CaratLane, right? But same one carat solitaire in LGD is getting it for INR 40,000-INR 50,000, similar price range. And, being a youth, you know, who aspires to own solitaire, will we see any demand shifting?
Could happen. I can't say for right now. Right now, across CaratLane stores, across Mia stores, across Tanishq stores, and, that's 900 of them, we haven't really had people coming in saying, "Give me LGD." We haven't really... And we've been constantly tracking that. It's been an ongoing effort to understand.
So it's not that the customer, in fact, customers are coming asking, "Can you certify yours are completely natural?" So as of now, on the fringe, there are people who are getting, but many of the people who are buying this INR 50,000-70,000, many of them, not all of them, are also sitting as people who already have other jewelry, and they say, "Okay, let me try out this pendant extra." And for the new entrant into solitaire, in fact, we see good traction for the 0.30 carat, 0.50 carat, both in CaratLane, and there's a demand in Mia also, and even in Tanishq, you know, for engagement, they want something authentic. In fact, the first-time diamond buyer will be very hesitant to actually straightaway jump into lab-grown because she's anyway wary of diamond. On top of it, lab-grown, she doesn't know.
It's the more evolved diamond buyer who's willing to play around a little bit with this. That's my understanding.
Just one-
Also, there is a big distinction between solitaires and jewelry. When I want to buy a beautiful butterfly pendant for INR 40,000 from CaratLane, I'm buying a beautiful piece and not a stone. So those who are buying only stones will compare what, in a way, what you're saying, but those who are buying jewelry will not make the same comparison.
I mean, solitaire studded jewelry or engagement rings, for that matter.
Correct. So in that space, yeah, but that space is a small part of the total business, and those points that Ajoy is raising will kick in even in that comparison.
Right. And just one last thing: You showed a wonderful chart with respect to the LGD prices falling, right? I mean, there were hefty margins, but now it, it has almost reached to the cost of production. And below cost of production, I mean, barely in last six months, people who are growing diamonds, they are making the... They are not even recovering depreciation. But here on, any takeaway you have with respect to prices?
It's difficult. My question to most diamond traders on this area has been in that direction, and there's two schools of thought. One school says, "Nai aur nahi ho sakta," because they are already struggling. And then there are others who say, "Depends," because how much are you willing to absorb the fixed investment? How much you are willing to play it out? So the supply-demand situation changes. Third piece, the moment automation in cutting and polishing of small diamonds happens, which I believe could have already started happening in China... Then the game changes again. So with technology, taking any guesses on whether it has hit the bottom is a big question mark. Maybe you're right, maybe, you know, both schools of thought exist.
Right. And on the natural diamonds, do we have any hedging policy? Because do we have any inventory risk as such?
See, first of all, let me clarify, yeah. This whole bit of volatility is in the big stones, that to the 1-carat plus, which is a very small proportion of our entire studded business. There's a large amount of studded business which we do, which is mostly in the smalls. In the smalls, prices have not come down. In fact, it is threatening to go up because of the Alrosa related, you know, bans, G7 and so, so on and so forth. In smalls, there's we were hoping we'll get something, some efficiencies, but it's in fact firm. So. And when I say smalls, these are like, you know, 1 mm or below, and, and a large proportion of that is sitting there. So I'm not worried really about the inventory risk, because it's certainly not under threat at all.
In fact, if at all, it may go up. As a proportion of the overall inventory, it's a very small proportion when I look at the total inventory. Not material.
Thank you.
There are no hedging products, as far as I know, for diamond, you know, so, yeah, we don't do.
Thank you.
Hi, this is Shirish Pardeshi from Centrum.
Can't hear you. If you could, speak up.
Yeah. This is Shirish Pardeshi from Centrum. Ashok Ji, all the businesses had shared their targets aspirationally to be achieved or focused by FY 2027. I have a specific question for you. What is the war on waste saving we would have got in FY 2024? And FY 2027, is it maybe you can quantify in terms of percentage or maybe absolute number?
So FY 2024, so all these Project Alchemy, which you heard, or War on Waste 2.0, which I spoke about, they are all for FY 2025. The FY 2023 and FY 2024 were large investment years after pandemic, you know, where there was no constraint put on businesses or any people adding talent or digital. Nothing was put. So FY 2023, 2024 was completely open, environment. Now we are setting up that now we need to bend the curve of our, fixed cost trajectory. That is where all the programs are, in some form or the other, are getting formulated, some part has got formulated, some actions have got initiated. So it's too early for me to put any number, but this is FY 2025 onwards.
But you can share your aspiration?
No, it's still for firming up, Shirish Bhai. Maybe some people have already few numbers, but this exercise is not yet complete. We are just two months in the financial year.
Sure.
Yeah.
Sure. My last question for Suparna. You had aspirationally shown that in the premium segment, we want to target some market share or improve our market share. Does the current portfolio is sufficient for us? So basically, what I am trying to understand, is it the channel strategy which is going to drive your aspirational market share, or we need to have more products and brands to come and build this share?
So it is very much getting built as we speak. Right now, it is all brands. We have three brands, as I spoke. We are looking at a fourth brand to be launched. The retail side is still very small. I mean, we haven't even opened the first store. It can scale up in the next 2-3 years, provided the model looks, you know, sustainable and robust. Very hard right now to say what would be the share. But I think it will be largely brand led for FY 2025, definitely, even FY 2026, after which I think retail will become bigger.
Okay. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you.
And maybe on a closing note, taking from what Suparna said, you know, there was a view maybe 10 years back about the Titan brand, the watch brand, you know. By then, we had sold maybe 150-175 million pieces, including, of course, Fastrack and Sonata and all that, and it was on everybody's wrists, and it had become a little bit commonplace and all that. And in the context of international brand choices, how would Titan brand do well and all that? But if you see today, and she spoke about how the 500 pieces at INR 130,000 had just flown off the shelves.
If you look at this, you know, the segment called the Silvers, for example, I mean, there are so many people in India now, women and men, whose first watch was a Titan, whose first anniversary was celebrated with a Titan, and who are now sitting as part of the top 1% of this country, and whose attachment, emotional attachment to Titan brand is so deep. Today, they are ripe for a INR 200,000 Titan watch, which, you know, can blow their mind. They've also become very confident of themselves as Indians, and they don't really need an international badge to signal their own self-worth or to signal to others their achievement.
And that is actually underpinning a lot of great achievements of Titan brand, particularly Titan brand, in the last five years, and we see actually a limitless opportunity on that front, particularly in a certain age group, and perhaps as we build the brand, even in the younger age groups. But certainly in the 45 and above, which has got a lot of money to spend, and where analog watch is an expression of so many things, I think we're going to really drive that opportunity with the Titan brand and so much of innovation that you will see. And some of that she has deliberately held close, you know, and not share, because we want the actual launches in the next 12 months to blow the minds of everyone, including those in the room. Thank you.
Thank you, Venkat. With that, we close this, today's proceedings. Thanks to all the people on the dais for taking time out to answer all the queries. Thanks for all the people who have come down here and have facilitated this engrossing discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Lunch is being served outside, please.