Melorra, established in January 2016 by Saroja Yeramilli, is India’s fastest-growing lightweight D2C brand designing BIS-hallmarked, affordable, and trendy jewelry for everyday wear. The brand creates a wide range of pieces with gold and diamonds that allow women to sport fashionable designs and wear fine jewelry every day.

The brand has so far raised over $55 million in funding from investors including Symphony Asia, Lightbox Ventures, 9Unicorns, Value Quest, Venture Catalysts, Param Capital, Alteria Capital, and family offices of some of India’s biggest business houses.

The company has been growing 100 percent year-on-year and has reached annual recurring revenue of $100 million. “We aim to continue expanding and targeting $1 billion in revenue by 2026,” said Saroja Yeramilli, Founder and CEO, Melorra.

Growth in Covid Times

At the beginning of the pandemic, Melorra was an online-only brand. This strategy proved beneficial for the brand because there was great movement from offline to online, and a lot of discovery of Melorra happened during the Covid period, which helped them in a great way.

The brand also onboarded Shraddha Kapoor as its brand ambassador during the first Covid wave to ramp up its marketing investments. Additionally, during that period when every other brand was transitioning from offline to online, Melorra actually went against the norm and launched its first offline store.

“The industry wondered why we would do that being an online company. But, we got some great deals in the malls and that was a key reason for us to open stores. Hence, we set up a lot of company-owned stores at that point. We were quite futuristic during and before Covid, which has helped us greatly in continuing to grow at this rate,” explained Yeramilli.

Product Mix

Melorra offers over 18,000 different jewelry designs in categories including lightweight, diamond, and occasion wear, among others, with a focus on trend-led, modern styles.  It sells stylish jewelry for regular or everyday wear that is centered on gold, diamonds, and gemstones. Its product line includes rings, earrings, pendants, chains, solitaires, and other items.

The brand’s target audience is young users who seek affordable, better-designed, and trendy items. Melorra launches new jewelry collections every week, and around 400-500 new designs every month.

Growing E-Commerce Biz

In the beginning, the brand used to sell through its own D2C channel. During the pandemic period in 2021, the brand got listed on the e-commerce marketplaces such as Flipkart, Amazon, Ajio, and Tata CLiQ, among others, for the first time.

“We had underestimated the potential of marketplaces in India to sell jewelry category.  However, it has shown a big potential in our business. Consumers have become much more open to buying fine jewelry online than ever before. There was a lot of interest to buy jewelry on these marketplaces during Covid, which has sustained the interest post-pandemic as well. Hence, we've become far more open-minded towards reaching consumers in all sorts of manners,” Yeramilli said.

Additionally, marketplaces help in brand discovery and building trust among new consumers. “E-commerce currently contributes 85-90 percent of our overall business. But as we open more stores via franchise route, our offline is going to contribute more,” she noted.

Offline: A Big Thrust Area

The brand currently operates 23 company-owned stores in India. It is present in cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Siliguri, Guwahati, and Bhopal, to name a few. “We plan to have 350 offline stores by 2026,” Yeramilli stated.

In terms of offline expansion, the brand is now planning to set up franchise stores. It will expand through Franchise-Owned and Franchise-Operated (FOFO) model. “We think this model is best to strengthen our business as franchisees have a local understanding of the catchment and they have deep relationships in the cities that they operate in,” she asserted.

Going forward, Melorra is going to strengthen its presence in the South. It will soon sign up franchisees in Hyderabad and Chennai. Talking about the offline retail format that the brand would be targeting, Yeramilli said the brand already had a presence in malls and high streets, and it'll continue to execute on both, depending on the market, catchment, and jewelry buyer who's coming into those markets.