(Rapaport, June 24, 2004) The International Gemological Institute’s India office, which up to now has been sending teams to manufacturers to assess and certify jewelry in Mumbai, said it expanded its services to other parts of India, by plane and with a mobile lab in a van.
Mobile labs solve the logistics factor and cut traders’ costs. “India is a large country, and traders from different parts of the country or, for that matter, far-flung suburbs of Mumbai like Kandivali and Borivali cannot cart diamonds to the other end of town,” said IGI’s managing director, Tehmasp Printer. “So if they cannot come to us, we go to them.”
When the service was launched two weeks ago, “We flew a team of five trained gemologists and five support staff to New Delhi to certify the jewelry of the new showroom of Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri,” Printer says.
The service, launched two weeks ago, is meant for the jewelry segment and does not cover loose diamonds.
Printer said that ideally the firm prefers to certify a company’s entire inventory, leaving open the question of whether IGI insists on a minimum value before it will make a mobile call. “Let us say a large jewelry store or merchant has 2,000 to 7,000 carats of diamond jewelry that needs certification. Then we fly our team,” Printer said, but he added that smaller clients could also avail themselves of the service.
IGI’s Mumbai office has also arranged for diamond exporters to obtain their certificates from the firm’s offices worldwide.
“For example, if an Indian exporter wants to get his certificate from Antwerp, then all we do is send the data from Mumbai to our Antwerp office and the certificate is issued by Antwerp,” Printer says. “If the exporter wants a certificate from New York or from any of our offices he need not send the stone abroad. All the data can be generated here in Mumbai.”
Printer declines to offer revenue figures for IGI but said, “we have grown from three to 29 gemologists in our Mumbai office. We have also set up an office at the Santacruz Electronic Export Promotion Zone in northwest Mumbai meant for the diamond exporters. We are planning expansion and we may open IGI offices in other parts of India. We are growing rapidly.”
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