India, June 12 -- Silence is golden, speech is silver. An Indian trio defied the old adage. They went vocal and struck gold while dealing in silver.

It wasn't easy for Ishendra Agarwal, Nikita Prasad, and Sachin Shetty to start up with silver jewellery studded with lab-grown diamonds in a market traditionally obsessed with buying, storing and reselling gold.

Their brainchild, GIVA, started taking baby steps in 2019 as a direct-to-customer (D2C) jewellery ecommerce brand based in Bengaluru. Six years on, it has grown into an INR 505 Cr brand in the silver and lab-grown diamond jewellery space.

While India's fragmented jewellery market has seen some formalisation with organised jewellery chains like Kalyan Jewellers and PC Jeweller branc...